Credit @ Daren Thomas Magee
Joy.
It is an immense joy to be carried by the flow of life.
It is now a few days since I returned from the wonderful Tinos, my heart filled with love, my body full of energy.
Having left Athens to take a deep breath, I slipped away alone to a small house far from the centre. The ideal place to meditate, to resource, to refocus, to take stock of oneself without being parasitized by the outside world.
Just nature and oneself.
But nothing "of what I had planned" happened.
From the surprise arrival of friends to new encounters, improbable reunions, discoveries of new places, escapades at sea, evenings on the beach... the beautiful Tinos allowed the flow of life to enter during a stay that finally lasted much longer than I would have thought.
And to say to myself...
"Life is what happens to you when you have planned something else"
Allow yourself to be.
Just there, now, without expectation.
Being open enough to live in the present moment.
Listening.
To feel what our body is saying.
Listen to the voice of our soul.
Follow your intuition.
And then, to open up.
To oneself, to the other, to others.
To life.
Yes, life is what happens to us when we had planned something else.
It is this unforeseen event, this encounter, this desire, this need for expression, this movement.
It is this immutable force that flows in each of us and pushes us to act, to experiment, to create.
It is us, and we are it.
But how can we apprehend it in all its marvellous and magical potential without opposing our fears?
"Life begins when we leave our comfort zone"
Life begins when we step out of our comfort zone.
Hmm... easier said than done, you might say.
And yet.
This comfort zone that we all have, more or less, is double-edged.
We create it from scratch because it reassures us that we are in control.
But we forget that life itself, in its purest essence, is an uncontrollable force.
To try to control it is therefore to miss out.
It is true that we all experience a different reality depending on our background, our personal history, but also our conditioning and beliefs.
Certainly, each of us has his or her own path and we are sometimes confronted with trials, difficulties, disappointments, even tragedies.
This is all part of life and we know it.
However, these difficulties we face are not there to put obstacles in our way but to remind us that something greater and more beautiful exists.
They help us to grow, to free ourselves from our fears and to build.
But to build what? And how?
"Life is us, and we are it"
From my own experience, I have noticed that wanting to raise higher walls against external adversities in order to protect my comfort zone and avoid possible suffering has often taken me further away from life than it has brought me closer to it.
Indeed, no matter how hard we try to keep ourselves in this comfort zone, we cannot remain entrenched for long without life ringing at our door in one way or another.
Because life is us, and we are it.
Otherwise we die!
Therefore, the substantial construction is not outside ourselves but inside ourselves.
And this is one of the fundamental keys: to build a sufficiently solid base within oneself to be able to leave one's comfort zone and let the flow of life that we all carry within us flow.
To let it carry us.
To let it guide us.
To trust it.
As terrifying as it may seem to some, this is the only door to personal fulfilment.
For to trust life is to learn to trust ourselves.
It means entering into communion with it.
It means letting it express itself through us.
In this way, we enter into the movement.
We give ourselves the chance to experience new things, we open up to ourselves, we discover ourselves differently, we surprise ourselves.
We grow spiritually and are therefore no longer able to build walls, but to create a life that is true to ourselves.
A fulfilling life that is meaningful for ourselves and inspiring for others.
Because we have allowed ourselves to be, free from the fear of living.
And free to let the flow of life flow through us.
For life is us, and we are it.