Beauty Amidst Ashes

When I entered college as an eighteen year old kid, I saw the world blissfully in black and white. One side was right, one side was wrong. I fell right into the designed system.

I wanted to make a difference in the world and wanted to go into politics. My plan was to go to college for political science, go to law school, then jump into the political realm.

I did this for a while. I really applied myself to learning all that I could about the government. What I found was corruption on all sides.

I remember feeling intensely deflated and hopeless. I was overwhelmed, and I couldn’t process. I didn’t know how to reconcile the good I knew with the darkness I was discovering.

I simply couldn’t hold the knowledge of across the board corruption and do nothing. I am a “fix it” personality.

As barely more than a kid, I tried to protect myself in the best way I knew possible. I changed my major to English. I figured this would also help me in law school.

I thought, after law school, when I had a degree that could help me make a difference, I would dive back into the darkness I was uncovering then.

Until I could do something, I didn’t want to know. I took an ignorance is bliss approach, and I stood by it firmly. I had a philosophy professor who kept trying to get me to open my eyes again and look, but like a scared child covering my ears and squeezing my eyes shut as tightly as possible, I refused.

After months of being annoyed with him for trying to force my eyes open, I wrote a paper for him about why I didn’t want to look at the darkness of the world with my key point being that ignorance is bliss.

He nominated my paper for an excellence in academic writing award, and I won.

After I got my English degree, I decided to not go to law school.

I was tired. I was lost.

Unless you have sold out to the system, you can’t NOT see the corruption.

I kept seeing it, and I kept/keep wrestling with how to reconcile the intense darkness with the light that resides inside of me and everyone I know.

Over the years, I broke from my chosen political side. I found myself fighting with one wing of the same bird. It’s the wrong battle.

I have friends on both sides of the isle. When you sit and talk to people, you find that we all mostly want the same things. The great division between us all is an illusion.

I went from sticking my head in the sand as much as possible, to taking some of it in, in small doses, to diving deep into the dark side of things  in 2020, then for my sanity, back to taking it in, in small doses.

I struggle with how to handle the evils of the world and make it make sense with the good. Immense darkness coexists with encompassing light. Life is a bizarre paradox.

For the last several years, I’ve been holding onto the word, “love.” God is love. Love is what grounds me when I am floating off into a swirl of worry and concern. Love is the answer.

Erik’s aunt and uncle from Colorado were in town this weekend. They are incredible people who you instantly feel comfortable with.

I had some thought provoking conversation with Uncle Vic. He was telling me about his many years in service to our country. He was a high ranking military officer who among other things worked as a translator. He traveled the world and witnessed things that many of us will only see on tv, read about, or maybe not hear about ever.

I’m sure in our limited conversations that I barely scratched the surface of his experiences.

Nonetheless, the stories were incredibly told, and his perspective was eye opening. The world needs to hear his story, and I hope he writes a book someday.

Anyway, he shared with me how he, on several occasions, lost hope in humanity. I asked how he is so positive and upbeat now.

His answer was too eloquent for me to be able to do justice, but the gist was that people are resilient. We all face so much tragedy and hardship. These things should cripple us, but we humans keep pressing forward,  living, and loving, and that is inspirational.

There is beauty in this paradox we exist in.

I had some nightmares last night that left me feeling off this morning. In my time of reflecting on those nightmares before clearing the sleep out of my eyes, this message of beauty, love, and grace amidst the ashes and darkness came to my heart, and I had to share with all of you.