Puzzle Pieces

It's three in the morning. The moonlight dances through the bathroom window, illuminating a tear-stained face through the darkness. Between the sobs sings a chorus of crickets and the bone-chilling "creeeek" of trees bellowing in the wind. I rest on my knees, and the chilled, ivory-colored tile kisses my skin, sending chills throughout my body. My destructive thoughts guided me here from the comfort of my bed like an insect beckoned to a light, and I am reduced to a hunched over figure on a cold bathroom floor.

I wrack my brain, blindly searching for answers among the sea of negativity being spewed from my consciousness. It turns a cold shoulder, and to no avail I am left hopelessly seeking guidance. A calming of the storm inside my head. And so I try my luck with a higher power. I plead to God, whispering my woes into the night. I say, with utter desperation, "God, please, help me to understand my purpose for this life. I feel that I have strayed from the path I once was on, and fear I have lost sight of where it is I should be heading. I feel as though I am now wandering, weakened and alone, through a maze with which there is no exit. One in which I've reached yet another dead end. Help me to understand..."

Moments later, an autumn breeze creeps through the slightly cracked window, and with it, carries in a soothing voice that caresses my ears. It says, softly, "My child, you wish to reach the finish line when you've barely just begun the race. Put simply, life is like a puzzle: as you learn, grow, and experience new aspects of life, you will collect pieces of yourself along the way. By themselves, these pieces are insignificant, failing to shed light on what it is you're looking to find. Slowly, but surely, they start to come together, piece-by-piece. By the end of your life, you will have a moment where you'll have the final piece, the one that fits just right, filling the last empty space. It's then that you will see it. You will see that every single moment of your life has created just that: a life. Every decision you make will guide you to where you wish to go, and so you are never truly lost...only on your way to discovering the next puzzle piece. You simply need the courage, and the patience, to finish it."

Just as it had traveled in, the voice faded away with the breeze, surely off to console some other sad soul praying for an answer to their own questions. A sudden stillness washed over me as I left the numbing tile and climbed back into the warmth of my bed. For the first time in as far back as I can remember, I am lulled into a peaceful sleep, comforted with the belief of surviving the day to come, and every one to follow.

Someday I will complete the puzzle...

Someday.

(b.m.)

Soul to Soul

Why hello there, Moths. 

Hello to another Monday. Mondays are that universally dreaded day, aren't they? They mark the end to the weekend, and the beginning to a long week until it's the weekend again! But maybe if we change our perception of this specific day of the week, we won't curse the moment our alarm clocks go off in the morning, making us get out of bed and taking care of that scary "r" word.....responsibilities *shudder* So how do we do that? We look at Mondays as a beginning. A fresh start. The week ahead can go however you will it to go. If you mold your mindset into a positive one, you can take control (that's right, control) of how things will turn out. You can be in control of how well that presentation goes, or how you do on your exam, or how well you stick to whatever goal you're striving towards. So instead of moaning and complaining that it's that dreaded Monday again, say to yourself, "it is a fresh start to the week, and I am going to make it a good one." Once you've nailed the week and your goals have been achieved, then you can put those party pants on and reward yourself with the pleasures of the weekend!

Or sweatpants and your favorite tub of Ben and Jerry's, like most of my weekends......

Now, onto the topic of the day. In my last post I talked about reincarnation and the idea of the soul continuing on into other lifetimes. I thought I would continue the discussion of souls and talk about soulmates. There are a lot of different religions that believe in the idea, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism. Each have their own beautiful interpretations.

Hindus believe there is a link between souls in a karmic way. Lehnu, in the Gujarati language, is the term they use for souls that we constantly cross paths with, who guide us towards a life that serves a higher purpose. They are destined to be connected to your life in some way or another.

Buddhists call the idea pratitya-samutpada, meaning all beings are "interrelated." Very similar to what I talked about in my last post, they believe that the soul can live many lifetimes, being reborn an infinite number of times, and along with that are our relationships. If a connection with another soul is powerful enough, then both of your souls will reconnect in the new lifetime. This is what causes the feeling of meeting someone for the first time and feeling as if you've known them forever.

Judaism has the Yiddish word bashert, meaning "bestowed." Your bashert is a person bestowed upon you as your destined partner. They also have the word hevruta, or "learning partner" similar to hinduism in that it is someone that guides you toward a purpose. Hevruta is someone that challenges you to be your best self, rather than someone that is a perfect match or "completes" you.

Many religions have many interpretations, but the common takeaway from all three of these is that they believe that we have soulmates. So, I know you're all dying to hear what I think about the subject. I absolutely do believe in the idea, but I want to note that the term soulmate, in my opinion, does not just mean a romantic partner. I think soulmates can take on many forms, including lifelong friendships. I think we can have more than one soulmate, such as a best friend that understands you in ways you don't even understand yourself, a friend that always knows what to say without saying anything, and a friend that you just instantly click with. And then there could be the romantic partner, someone you feel completely safe with, someone that constantly challenges you to be better, and someone that you knew you loved the first time you spoke (love at first sight is an ENTIRELY different subject for a different day). It's about connection. How your soul connects to my soul or his soul or hers. If you feel you have one of these soulmates, that destiny has brought you together with that person in some crazy way, do yourself a favor:

Never let go, moths. xo  

Contrast

Hello My Lovely Moths.

It is a crisp fall night out and the breeze coming in from my open window onto my hot skin from my heated blanket is blissful. Late at night when the world is asleep and the air is still, I have my window wide open just listening to the gentle rustle of the wind kissing the tree's leaves, and the calm of it all is so radiant I could almost hear the stars singing to me. In that moment, nothing else in my life matters. There is no today nor tomorrow, there is only the present and I have absolutely no worries. It's almost so freeing that I forget everything that has ever caused me strife and the tiresome weight I've been trudging has been lifted off of my shoulders. But as much as I want to pause that safe moment and live in it forever, at some point my eye lids start to droop and I am caressed by sleep....

A n y w a y, 

Where was I going with this post tonight...? Ahh yes I remember. Tonight I want to talk about the idea of the balance between life and death, good and bad, light and dark, etc. A little background:

The other day I was riding the university bus to a class and feeling absolutely dreadful of how things have been going in my life with school, relationships, personal accomplishments, etc. Lately it has felt as though the shadows have been puppeteering my strings, drawing me into its darkness like a predator and its prey. As I was feeling all of this, lost in the music that was drowning out the world around me and staring blankly out of the window, I saw two pigeons fly off of the roof of a building: one was pure white while the other was strikingly dark. I know I know, you were seeing things, that sounds like something out of a movie, but I swear to you I saw it clear as day. A bird as white as fresh snow flying alongside another bird so much darker that it seemed as though it were the white bird's shadow. The moment was fleeting as the birds flew off past another building, and I looked around as if to see if anyone else had just seen what I had. Nobody seemed to be as astonished and jaw-droppingly mind blown as I was, and the passengers around me were either lost in whatever it was lighting up their phone screens, or desperately trying to secure their spot on the nightmaringly overcrowded Rutgers bus. It was the most striking thing I had ever seen, and my poetic mind immediately jumped to the conclusions that only I was meant to see those birds and that they were flying, feathered signs from someone up there answering my worries and doubts.

Bri, they were two random birds that happened to fly by while you were riding the bus. That hardly seems like a sign from God.

I can see how that observation would be more realistic, but I don't believe in coincidences. As I hinted to in the beginning, the idea of a  "balance" between light and dark, yadda yadda, was sparked by these two birds. You see, without one, we would not be able to appreciate the other. For instance, take the notion of life and death. If we did not experience death (say that we lived forever), then there would be no drive to live life to the fullest because we will have eternity to do the things we want to do. Like a project with no deadline--it would never be finished. On the flip side, there has to be and end to life for there to be the idea of death, without which we would not be able to appreciate the beauty of. Like a solution with no problem to give meaning to it. Seeing the white pigeon would not have been as significant without the presence of the darker one beside it to emphasize the contrast. In life, no matter how much turmoil you go through, no matter how much pain and suffering, you wouldn't be able to feel how truly effortless life is without it. Like that feeling when you have a stuffy nose and looking back at how much you take for granted the times when you could breath with your mouth closed and not have to blow your nose every five minutes sounding like a train horn... Ahh, the simple things in life. 

So yes, I think that the two birds were a sign to remember that with the storm will come the calm after. I was so humbled to be given this intimate message. As if I was chosen to see this because I would be able to appreciate its significance the most. Given to me so that I may relay it to others. I promise, no, I pinky promise--*gasp* that's the most powerful promise there is, that's how confident I am in this--that you're no exception to that rule. That as hopeless as the world may seem around you, it will get better. The beauty of it all is that you will come out of it so much stronger, and realize that because life threw you that curveball, you can learn how to not strike out the next time around (talk about a home-run, am I right?!).

Okay, is it just me or am I on fire with the analogies tonight??
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Accept all that comes with life, moths. xoxo

     

A Little Faith

Good Evening, Moths. 

I've been on a rollercoaster of emotions as of late. I could be laughing so much that my cheeks hurt in one moment, and sink into a depressive state retreating to the safety of my bed within a matter of hours. A constant fluctuation between being on top of a mountain, looking out at the world, and sitting at the bottom of the sea, left alone to my thoughts. It's exhausting, really. I know you're all thinking, this sounds very saddening Bri, but as with everything else in life, there is a lesson to be learned from this, and a point to sharing these personal ups and downs. 

So, the topic I want to talk about tonight is the idea of the body as a temporary vessel, and how minuscule our time on earth is. This is not to say that what we do doesn't matter and that there's no point to life, so just bare with me and keep an open mind. I recently watched the movie "The Shack" (and by recent I mean just last night). If you've taken anything away from the posts I've written in the past, you can likely gather that I am an empathetic, emotional person. Usually (almost always) there will be a part in a movie that I will cry to, it's inevitable. Whether it be a happy ending, sad ending, and everything in between. What was special about this movie is that I was so invested, that I cried multiple times throughout. What's extra special about it is that the idea behind it is based on someone that lost their faith in God when something terrible happened in their life. 

Hold up, you're about to talk about religion?? 

I will tell you that despite having gone to church almost every Sunday growing up, I am not the most religious person. I don't study the bible or listen to scriptures on the radio in the morning. Because of my ecology background, I heavily learned about evolution growing up and for a while I was hard-headed on the idea of a "higher being" controlling all of life rather than just nature itself. I asked questions (and still ask) such as "why isn't there anything in the bible about dinosaurs" and  "how could a person be made using the rib of another??" As I've gotten older, I am a lot more open to the idea of God and wish to understand more. I know, it all seems confusing on where I stand as of now, but all I'm going to say is that I still believe in evolution and natural selection and all of that ecology jazz, but I accept the idea that there is something greater than we can ever imagine that lies beyond the earth. 

That brings me to my next point: we as humans aren't even close to being able to comprehend all that God and heaven may be. Just writing this post, I have a hard time finding the right words to convey my thoughts. "The Shack," although a movie, beautifully captures the hesitance of humans to accept that there is a God due to all of the hatred and violence and sin that happens every day. A common phrase skeptics use is "why would God let these bad things happen." I'll be honest, this was something that sat at the back of my mind when I went to church growing up, but the movie does a really beautiful job of reflecting this thought and creating a possible explanation for it. The idea is that everyone is God's children, and He/She loves all of them unconditionally, with no bias or hesitance. God, however, cannot stop bad things from happening. There will always be sin and bad things on earth. But as I mentioned earlier in this post, human life is temporary. 

Take for example, the movie. The onset of the skepticism and anger of the main character is that his young daughter was kidnapped and murdered while he was saving his other two kids from drowning in the lake they were camping by. As anyone else would have reacted, he went into a deep depression. How could such a horrible thing happen to this young, beautiful girl? More so, how could God let something like that happen to such an innocent soul. Yes, what happened was terrible, but this little girl, a child of God, will now spend the rest of eternity with God in a place where she will never feel pain, grief, fear, etc., again. A moment of horror will now equate to an eternity of happiness. When looking at it that way, her death isn't something to be mourned. The father will have to wait a little while until he can join her, but by the end he knows that they'll be together again in this eternal life, and the years he'll have to spend without her are nothing compared to the lifetime they'll spend.

Now how does this relate to me and my depression lately? When I stop and take a step back from my life, I realize one of two things: (1) what I'm feeling now won't last forever, and (2) by accepting God I will always be loved, and the short time that I have on earth will be nothing compared to what I have waiting for me after it's come to an end. It's almost a relief once you accept this. Like all of the struggles that I face/will face are so unsubstantial and no matter what failures I face or mistakes I make along the way, I will always be forgiven and loved unconditionally. The vulnerable human body with its sensations like hunger, cold, pain, heart ache, and exhaustion are all--yes I'm going to say it for the millionth time--TEMPORARY. Stop fretting over the little things, because the human lifespan is a blip compared to e t e r n i t y. It's almost the same as when we were babies, how we don't remember a single sensation or memory from it. The times we had to get our first shots or cried for hours for some forsaken reason (sorry mom and dad) were so minute that our brains didn't have the capacity to hold onto any of it. That's how this life will be when we are spending eternity with God. You will make it through this. I will make it through this.  

Have a little faith, moths. xoxo

Lost and Found

It's only when we 

lose ourselves 

that we discover 

what we have 

to find.

Get lost, moths.

-b.m.