Creative wonder

Over the past three months, I’ve had the opportunity to travel and speak about my experiences of self-discovery and the lost Intruder. At each venue, invariably a stranger will seek advice on how to tailor my personal lessons to their lives, to learn the secret in overcoming long-term adversity.

There is no secret, and there is no overcoming.

Trying to deny a place for life’s hardships, the inevitable setbacks and heartbreaks, clever attempts to circumvent the universe’s trials are doomed to failure. Life is hard. It is also complicated beyond science, philosophy, technology, and perhaps even religion. We will never understand all the “whats” that confront us, never mind the “whys.” But that’s okay. Acknowledging this simple insight, accepting it deeply until it courses within us with each beat of the heart, might be the closest we can come to a cure for life.

Faith is a wondrous word: the peaceful incarnation of commonality we share with our surroundings. Yes, there is unfathomable pain and hardship in the world, only some of which is within our power to alleviate. We will all die, and we will never eliminate despair, never subdue humanity’s dark side of feeling.

It is that which defines our basest nature that also allows for the best in people, that fosters the kindness in a stranger’s eyes in passing, the sharing of a moment between two terrestrial creatures striving for insight into celestial questions. Pondering the meaning of a sunset in a lighthearted, shared marvel transforms the rawness inside us, shaping it into a powerful reality with all humanity’s soulful perfections and flaws.

Perhaps it is our job to navigate these inevitable detours until arriving at a vista of loveliness, the beautiful fullness of another amid the alchemy of creative wonder.