Hardship as Cosmic Discipline

I’ve been thinking about grief lately, as mentioned in my previous post. I’ve been thinking about the inevitable experience of loss and how each goodbye plays out differently from the next.

Grief isn’t something you can plan, you know? And that’s one of the most difficult parts, I think. It’s different every time, it’s going to hit when it hits and those feelings start off pretty all-encompassing for the majority of us. The last thing I want to do is sob in the yogurt aisle, but some days that’s just the way it goes.

I’ve long felt like I have an easier time letting go of things that are in good standing, which is to say that even if a departure is sudden I can reconcile it better if I’ve said what I felt and behaved in a way I am proud of. If the opposite is true and I have unfinished business when I experience loss, I have a much harder time accepting it.

I like things to be tidy when they end but that’s not often the case. As they say, our greatest mistake is believing we have time.

That mistake – believing ourselves immortal, in a way – doesn’t just land us in a world of regret when we lose the chance to mend what’s broken, but ultimately has us carrying unnecessary guilt and shame. This is likely to block growth, progress and connection.

This is what it is to make amends. This is what they mean by, “keep your side of the street clean”.

This is how we begin to move through life (and death, etc) without holding onto so much of the baggage. As I started to live with this in mind, making the best decisions I knew how to make and apologizing when I got it wrong, I began to find any other approach quite uncomfortable. I don’t like the way it feels when I treat others poorly and I really don’t like carrying the weight of my bad decisions and questionable conduct.

Living better makes me want to stay on track. Being a better version of myself is something I work hard at and I never want to forget that I am blessed to have the opportunity to do so.

But we do forget to count our blessings sometimes, don’t we?

I hit four digits on my day count this week. My time away from the hell of cocaine addiction is now over a thousand days.

By all accounts I am still a little kid learning how to live a grown up life. It’s difficult to juggle. I do have enough clarity of mind to have realizations of a growing nature, and I have enough time free from total bondage to exercise some kind of productive reflection.

When I first started to see some real positives coming from a life without using cocaine, it became a kind of daily spiritual awakening. I didn’t know it then, but I was hitting my personal pink cloud.

I couldn’t see it at the time because it wasn’t like I was overjoyed and regulated and having an easy go of things. I thought the pink cloud was going to be some euphoric joyful place from which i would inevitably plummet.

I had anhedonia, though, so joy wasn’t even remotely on my radar.

My pink cloud was more a matter of seeing the positive results as my own ability to think about the bigger picture improved.

As I started making better choices for myself and the people I love, I started to see things work out differently. It was something that encouraged me to stay on the path, but what I did was use this success as a link to my higher power.

I believed that doors were opening for me because I was on the right path. I saw this as divine intervention, cheerleading if you will. I saw every alignment as a sign. “When I walk righteously, everything comes up Lindsay!”

This is the life equivalent of winning big at the casino the first time you go. I thought this was how it worked. Maybe things weren’t joyful, but they were working out.

If things align for me because I’m headed in the direction I’m meant to because the universe has my back, then naturally I inferred the opposite must be true: if things weren’t going smoothly (read: my way) I must be on the wrong path.

If things don’t immediately happen the way I think they should happen I must be doing something wrong.

I began to see hardship as cosmic punishment.

I came to a moment of pause with this. Is this the higher power I believe? I’ve never subscribed to the idea that any kind of God or energy is one of a punishing or harsh nature. Why should I suddenly become the whipping boy to the Divine?

Discouraged as I have been at times, I have been able to trudge forward, however slowly I may be moving. As much as I wanted to throw my hands up in defeat and curl up in a ball of failure, I just refused to give in to the idea that I’m meant to be trapped in any unhealthy cycle. Things take me a very long time to come around to sometimes but the crux of every success is the perseverance.

Hardship is not punishment.

Hardship is inevitable.

The only difference between those who rise above and those who become consumed by their struggles is the ability to keep moving forward.

Y’gotta keep y’head up.