In the Eye of a Hurricane

“In the eye of a hurricane there is quiet; for just a moment, a yellow sky.” -Hamilton

In life, there is so much out of my control. There are so many people that I will never meet. There are so many people who will never meet me. There are natural disasters that no one can truly prepare for. There are accidents that happen. There are people who are full of hate. There are machine malfunctions. There is human error. There is illness. There is pain.   

If me listing any of those things have caused you to regret reading this blog, I hope you hold on a little longer for me to explain why I took you there.

My head swarmed with thoughts. Thoughts that told me, “People didn’t like me.” Thoughts that told me, “I wasn’t enough.” Thoughts that told me, “They are better off without me.” Thoughts that told me, “I could never change.” Thoughts that told me, “You are not smart.” I was living from mental breakdown to mental breakdown. Pushing myself to crippling anxiety.

I anticipated being miserable. When things were going well, I was waiting for the next thing to trigger me. I lived in glass walls easy to be shattered. Interacting with people was a task to fill my day, not a pleasure. Going grocery shopping was a constant battle between me and my anxiety. Driving alone in my car was torture because I was stuck drowning in self-hatred. I was helpless.

Looking back on the interactions with people that gave me what I like to call ‘gold nuggets,’ fills me with overwhelming gratitude. Gold nuggets are pieces of information that bring happiness or enlightenment. My “ah-ha” moment did not come from one instance. I am still collecting gold nuggets.                     

Life is a hurricane. It has the potential for chaos, confusion, and destruction. In the center of all of that, there is quiet. When I think about the overwhelming things I deal with in life, I imagine myself in the eye of a hurricane. I have no control over what is going on around me, but I am aware of the situation. Acknowledging where I am, I have a choice. I could choose to throw myself into the hurricane and relinquish any control or I could be in the midst of chaos and have control over me.

A friend of mine gave me a nugget recently that I am going to use and pass along. He called it “Zoom out!” It helped him put life in perspective. An example of this is my anxiety with grocery shopping. Instead of feeling miserable trying to pretend I’m “normal” because I’m afraid of what strangers might think if I choose to sing to myself and dance down the aisles of Wegmans, I’d zoom out. I am a single person, at a store, in a state, in a country, on a planet, floating in the universe. Hm, I don’t think anyone really cares enough to call me out on doing something that brings me happiness.

After zooming out, I can zoom back in with some perspective. Somehow and some way, I am on this planet. The rate of human death is 100%, yet I am still here. There are so many things that could potentially kill me in this life. My life is so fragile, but I’m still here.

That makes me really excited. My philosophy textbook talked about this idea called “reverence for life.” I am taking every moment as it comes. This is the moment I have control over. I can acknowledge my thoughts and feelings and then decide what outcome I want. I choose how to respond to my initial reaction to something or someone’s reaction to me. I can ask questions if I don’t understand. I can say what I am thinking or feeling without trying to protect other people’s feelings. I can enjoy and appreciate people because I know that we all have our own hurricanes.

My desire as a human is to pull people into the eye of the hurricane. I can’t fix people’s problems; I cannot change what is going on in their life. I can only meet people where they’re at. I would hope to leave people and have them leave me feeling lighter. I am not guaranteed that response, but I can still try.

I am only responsible for me and nothing can take that way. Not even a hurricane because I will find the eye of it.