A few years ago I was lucky enough to fulfill a dream. As corny as this may sound, there is no other way to describe it.

I daydreamed about those immense greenish rocky cliffs and turquoise quiet water for years. I thought about majestic, kind creatures and smiled when imagining the feeling of looking them up -close. I watched tons of videos and made horrible choices on hotels. Thank God I wasn’t traveling alone like I thought at first.  Even when I was finally sitting in the plane, I kept saying “I still don’t believe it”.

Right now, as I am writing this, those memories seem so distant, almost unreal.

Last week I wrote in my journal, “This is finally hitting. I feel like all this time this f*cking tornado was surrounding my house but now its finally touching my ground. Now I’m finally scared, and somehow I feel relieved”. (Scary note, today there WAS a tornado a few miles from my house). When this quarantine first started I was able to lock myself into this soft and somehow surreal bubble, probably because I’ve been doing it my whole life. But obviously, it wasn’t going to last forever. Once the tornado settles and touches someone you love, it’s all over, the bubble bursts and you can’t look away.

This journal entry was written in a very obscure, heavy night that made me remember my dramatic oversensitive teenager days. Next day I woke up tired, my eyeballs hurt, my mind was absent. Like some scared bunny hiding somewhere from its predator, my own ideas were frozen, my brain wasn’t daring to suggest anything. I just laid there. I took a shower and as I was brushing my teeth, this old image from my trip to Thailand broke my mind’s silence.

Legs crossed- right over left. Shoulders at ease. Chin slightly down. Eyes softly closed. Right hand relaxed and left one on right leg, palm facing up. Sitting in the middle of destruction, seeming unbothered. I remember standing there, in front of this Buddha figure in complete awe. Its facial expression and the surroundings were almost poetic. I didn’t want to leave.

This temple in Ayutthaya is best known for the face of a stone Buddha looking over from among the roots at the base of a tree, which is stunning and full of meaning. But for some reason it was this place that stroke me the most. Before I got to see it, I looked around to appreciate multiple Buddha figures destroyed, most of them without a head since they were mutilated in the 18th century’s Burmese invasion to the former Capital of the Thai Kingdom. The energy in the place was solemn, I felt like I was in a cementery, but as soon as I saw this Buddha the whole meaning of the place just changed. The fact that it was sitting there, looking peaceful in the middle of such destruction was inspiring.  And I thought “I want to take this with me”, just as I did with a few of other places and feelings in that trip. And I actually did. I don’t know if in some “no space or time scenario” my mind, heart or soul knew that one day, a few years later I would need this image, this feeling, the message that it brought to me. However it was, it traveled to the other side of the world with me and it came out at the exact right moment.

I’ve struggled, we all have. This image doesn’t ignore that, it kind of embraces it. You can actually see the Buddha’s body in different colors proving how he’s been destroyed and pulled back together. His head is darker, as probably his thoughts at one time, darkness may have gotten so close to him that it left visible traits. Just as it does with all of us. He sits tall but humble, his face screams compassion. His arms broken with trying. His hands resting at last. Everything around him is not what it used to be, and neither is he.

Neither are we.

Where are we going from here? We may not know but what I do know is that if I could just sit quiet for a minute and find that place in myself, that place that he reflected back at me when I first saw him. That place that resides inside all of us, I think I can keep going, just as I am right now, good, bad, even awful. If I can just look around and realize, we are all in this together. If I can find a way to be kind, to myself and others. If I can open up with humility and acceptance to this magnificent and excruciating experience that is being alive. Maybe I can remember who I am, who WE are.

And maybe, just maybe all of this wouldn’t be in vain.