Life: Equal and Opposite

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Anyone who has ever taken a physical science class knows this to be true (theoretically, at least). Based on my own empirical evidence, I would say it's true about life, too.

I have come to learn that for every positive emotion and experience we are lucky enough to uncover, we too, must deal with heartbreak and sorrow in some form. And vice versa. The Buddhists call it Samsara, as I remember learning about in high school so long ago. It essentially means that in life, we will all experience ups and downs as we go along. And that's unfortunate, but also... fortunate. It is paradoxical by its very nature, as is life itself. Nothing can be done to change it. It can only be accepted.

We cannot live and fully experience life without undergoing profound grief and loss, precisely as we cannot live and fully experience life without feeling extreme joy and euphoria. The good and the bad must go together in equal and opposite amounts, in order for the Universe to achieve natural balance. Nothing exists without its opposite, and everything in the whole of the Universe is interconnected. Therefore, when something is tugged, another thing must give. When one thing gives, it is because another has been tugged. This means that when something is lost, something else stands to be gained.

Or at least that's what I have chosen to believe, so that I may articulate and explain to myself the human condition and all that it contains. We may not experience so much of one while never being touched equally by the other. Otherwise we would cease to understand the spectrum of humanity as we do.

Logically, then, that is why we must feel such pain in our hearts at times in our lives. We must experience loss and heartbreak, in order that we may better understand and appreciate presence and love. We must become attached so that we may eventually suffer, and so that our eyes may learn how to see beauty in strife. All of our experiences culminate in our becoming exactly who and what we were destined to be, contributing to the Universe in precisely the way we were intended to do. This must include the good with the bad.

No person is complete and fully formed -- ever. We all continue to learn and grow and change and teach those around us in every moment of our lives. But it would be amiss to assume that we could ever get near such completeness without a scar of pain running through us, constantly reminding us of the immense clarity it brought to our lives. Our pain makes us human, equally as much as does our love. One cannot exist without the other.

The more open we are to receiving kindness and love, the more vulnerable we become to being caused distress and pain -- each to precisely the same degree as the other. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Therefore, to love greatly means to lose greatly. And both mean to be transformed by experience. If love has the potential to cleanse our souls and show us beauty, then pain has equally as much ability to break our hearts and bend our spirits; the both of them working together in unison to deliver us understanding which catapults us to twice the level of being as we were before.

But how grossly negligent it would be to live a life void of pain, and therefore, void of love, in order to feel very little at all. What an insult to the opportunity the Universe has handed us -- us, the very mass of cells which combined in precisely the way it did, to make us exactly the way we are -- on this planet, in this world, with these people, at this moment in time.

The Universe has lent us a window of time, and we may choose to do with it what we please, be it playing it safe and guarding our hearts, or risking it all and feeling as much as we possibly can -- positive and not. To feel means to feel it all. Do not smite the Universe or squander the privilege it has granted you. Once the Universe has closed our window, our chance of feeling anything will be permanently gone.

Even after such pain has stricken our hearts, and so many tears have left our eyes, we remain with memories in the back of our minds and at the bottom of our hearts, which we may choose to recall at any moment for the rest of our lives. Our experiences have left us with unique scars which did not exist before, and which will accompany us forevermore. And sure, all that it would take in order to feel the pain, is to remember the scar and how we earned it. But that's true for gazing fondly upon the happiness it taught us, too.

It is imperative that we understand one cannot exist without the other. Life seeks balance. Attachment will always mean suffering, but it will also always mean the purest of joy up until the very moment when suffering arrives. And the beautiful combination of the two is what makes our experience in this Universe meaningful and unique. It would be wise to cherish them both, and to see the love which came along with the pain, while we can. After all, we, like all things, are only ever intended to exist like this, for a moment in all of the vastness of time. Eventually, we too, will change and be gone, transformed into some other capacity, equal in energy, but opposite in form, in order to give back to the Universe everything that we have been given during our time in this life.

30 Day Writing Challenge: Day 19 (Five Fears You Have)

Day 19: Five fears that you have

This one might be a little tough, because I don't really go around thinking about my fears very often. I don't know that I really have a lot of them, at least not from examining my thoughts on the surface. But I know fear is nothing more than an emotion, and I've got a full range of those, so I will do the best I can.

1. Being alone. Like in the creepy way when you walk into a place like a large house or a shopping center that is normally noisy and full of life, but it's actually empty and silent now. The kind of alone that scares me is when I am physically alone, and I can hear every small creak of a wooden floor or draft whistling through the crack between the door and its frame. I don't like it because I have watched entirely too much television and read way too many books, and my imagination goes wild with ideas of serial killers and seventy-year-old ghosts, and suddenly the hairs on the back of my neck are on edge and a simple gust of wind gives me a heart attack.

2. Being shot. You may laugh at this one, but it is very real. There have been times when I am walking somewhere in a very open, public space and a car drives past me and I think, "I would be really easy to gun down right now." I know that sounds awful, that I think about things like that... But is it really so awful that I think about it, or is it awful that other people actually do it? I have a strong enough dislike for guns in the hands of everyone, that I fear them. I spend most of my time on a college campus located in the middle of one of the most under-served, poverty-stricken, urban areas of the largest city (the only city) in Kansas. When I read national headlines on a regular basis about shootings in movie theaters, on college campuses, and in elementary schools, I start to get scared. Even more so when the state government announces a plan to make carrying guns on campus perfectly legal for everyone. (No lie. Google it.)

3. Losing a loved one. This one is pretty self-explanatory, I think. I have always been afraid of loving my loved ones since I can remember waking up from a nightmare at a young age and fighting back tears to tell my mom I had a dream that she died. (Analyze that for what it's worth.) I think as soon as my childlike brain was able to comprehend the adult idea of never seeing someone again, I realized that it could happen -- that it was in fact, going to happen -- to people I know and love. And that's a tough pill to swallow; one that I don't know if anyone ever really learns to get over.

4. Being left. That's a pretty real fear that I think most people have, but they are too afraid to admit it, or maybe they just can't articulate it because they don't even consciously realize it. The thing is, for many serial monogamists, or even for someone whose parent accidentally forgot them at the grocery store once, being left by someone you care about is frightening. It's frightening because it is such a real possibility; because you know, deep down, that it has a chance of actually happening... again. Not to get too terribly spiritual, but one of the main lessons of Buddhism is that "attachment leads to suffering". That's the whole game of life. You can't get hurt if you don't get attached. But, like so many others in the world, I get attached. It's only human to do so, after all. Getting attached is literally what makes us human. (That, and opposable thumbs.) Getting attached can be a beautiful thing! But like most other beautiful things, it also deserves respect for the danger of hurting you that it carries with it. Being left scares me because it has happened to me more than once before, and I know it will probably happen again. But that's okay. It cuts deep and it makes you examine yourself at the core of your being. And my goodness, do you ever grow from facing that fear.

5. Failure. Not the baby kind of failure, like getting an F on a midterm and crying about it then eating junk food all weekend long. That kind of failure I've experienced and I have recovered from before. I accept that that kind of failure happens on occasion. I mean the kind of failure where you grossly disappoint someone you admire, like your parents, your friends, your mentor, or yourself. I am afraid of the kind of failure where you have nothing to show for your effort except for a tough lesson learned and some scarring life experience. Failure like "I dropped out of college because I just couldn't be bothered to try," or "I moved halfway across the country and couldn't find a job that would hire me after graduation, so now I have nowhere to stay". I think everyone is a little bit afraid of failure, because like it or not, avoiding it is often what keeps you motivated to succeed. I am fairly confident in my ability to succeed, through whatever resourceful means are necessary, though, so I don't know that this fear is very realistic for me. It's more like encountering a serial killer: the chances that it'll happen are slim, but dire, and the only way to survive is to use what's around you to get out alive.