I need to point something out that doesn’t really get acknowledged a whole lot due to the drowning of our pain.

Let’s be honest here, everyone reading this has probably cried or screamed within the last week. Pain is a real thing, it is. There are so many books, words, articles, poems, videos and quotes to define the way we hurt,  but what about the way we survive?

Our ability to survive is one huge understatement.

If you googled the deffiniton of survival the first thing you will probably read is, “The state or fact of continuing to live or exist, typically in spite of an accident, ordeal or difficult circumstance”. I love the process of mourning but our humanity is drowning in our focus of pain, discomfort and uncertainty and we are forgetting how capable we are of actually living.

When I got out of an on going relationship I had for two years I remember I physically wanted to be hit by a train. Loss hurts, it attacks us. Detachment is the thing that puts pain in our chest, tears on our face,and way too much or not enough ice-cream in our stomachs.

When we lose something or someone, we are usually told that we will be okay, that we have support, but there is something that is not planted and imbedded into the way we live that seriously needs to be: we need to enter every walk of life being completely aware that we will survive and we need to leave every walk of life still aware that we did survive.

Our survival rate does not depend on how much we lose or how we much love we put into something only to have it taken away from us—we are built to survive regardless. We somehow manage to forget this though. We forget this when our brain thinks that our existence is dependent upon other things in life.

Our existence holds no permanence and truly requires minimal things to sustain a healthy heart beat. Connection has the ability to bring joy and meaning to our life but we are not made to be dependent on specific people. Nothing and no one can truly define the way we ever live because our lives are based around change and the way we allow evolving to take place. Our life will never stop proceeding just because we think we can’t live without someone.

We are meant to feel, but we are not meant to sink. We only start to drown due to the perception that that’s actually an option.

We are meant to be raw, to be messy, to be vulnerable and to consist of pain, but we are also meant to unconditionally understand that we will continue despite of everything.

We love deeper, we live with more joy and we understand our own being infinitely more when we go into every single thing we do knowing there’s no promises in it and we do it anyways. We find and create our most meaningful life when we live to experience everything we can, while acknowledging our ability to survive when things go wrong.

We need to base our existence off of nothing but our sense of worth and the fascination we have for life and all of the instability it holds.

We will continue to exist in spite of all the accidents, ordeals and every other difficult circumstance. Our bodies are meant to.

~

Author: Leena Sanders

Editor: Katarina Tavčar

Photo: Andréa Portilla/Flickr