I revived this entry from my old blog. Written on January 22, 2009, I read it again today and it still spoke volumes.
Today has been good, and although life is never easy, I’m celebrating a year of a life of a turn-around. I went into the New Year hoping for better, with the first hours being some of the worst of my life.
But today is different. Something else is shinning through. Waking me up. Saying “Hello, sit down, and enjoy life. Don’t argue, don’t fight it, and don’t run away. Just bask in it.” So, here I am, basking.
I have a habit of playing some of the most beautiful songs on repeat until I grow tired of them. I’ve kind of done this with life. I take for granted all the beautiful things, the parts I love most, until I see nothing in them because I forgot what it is I loved to begin with. I grew blind and went deaf.
The roughest part of life is forgetting why you’re here and wondering why everything went dark. You know the feeling. The one where it’s so black you can’t see your hand in front of you. It’s scary. So you fight, you run, you get angry and then give up because the lights never came back on.
I have two choices.
I can get up. I can speak. I can flip the switch and love what’s in front of me.
Or I can sit in the dark. I can cry. I can hurt until I’m sick.
I pick the first one.
“I often find myself thinking complaints about life, about business or politics or relationships. Anymore, though, when I complain, I am starting to realize that, in part, every ounce of nothingness in life is my fault, because I always have the ability to speak something into it, to create a different reality. A theory that life is meaningless is just an excuse not to try. It’s safe. It’s risk free. It may end in ruin, but it is a ruin we can control, and we know with certainty what will happen. We will be bored. Or worse.
I think what we need this year is a bit of courage to stand up to the dark forces that lie about life, that say life has no meaning, no beauty and no hope. There is always meaning, even in the darkest of hours. We can always speak something into the nothingness.”
- Don Miller
