It’s easy to fall into the habit of just living; especially if you’re single. But it can happen also if you’re married, with children, or a significant other. Life becomes a routine of events strung together by the dictates of the situation we’ve created for ourselves. Sometimes by choice … most times by accident.
We live in such small worlds. Surrounded by the people we know the music we like, the opinions that suit our frame of reference. Stepping outside of our comfort zone is hard, since we will be challenged by the diversity of a larger world: people who do not look like us, music unfamiliar in syncopation and sound; opinions that confront the very fabric of our own often narrow point of view.
Life can lose a lot of its meaning in the comfort of the familiar. So once again I am challenged by mystery.
When I open myself to the larger world—I become larger. When I expose myself to different people and opinions and perspectives, I expand my capacity to understand while suspending judgment (since it’s impossible to judge or have an opinion about things I really don’t know). Case in point, when I consider the essence of homosexuality, I have to admit that I am totally hetero (I really love women); I can’t even begin to understand loving a member of my gender with the same intensity as that which I feel for members of the opposite sex … but there are people who do.
I can say that it’s not normal … but normal is subjective. I can say that it’s not natural, but since nature is said to “abhors a vacuum” I must assume that there is something that somehow needs to be fulfilled (neither am I that arrogant or mean as to declare to my gay friends that what they experience is unnatural), in short I am left with mystery; the simple fact that I just don’t understand. And I’m alright with that.
The same can be said of God and republicans (just kidding). There are things and ways of being that simply elude me. And that’s okay. I don’t know everything and neither do I feel the need to. Understanding this has freed me up from trying to convince others that they are wrong—which doesn’t mean I never challenge a opposing opinion—simply that I am not invested in doing so.
As I become more cognizant of living, I have begun to notice that most of my life is ruled by mystery. They are the things that I assume about other people, the actions that can’t be explained; the feelings I have for no reasons other than what I intuit. I am humbled by this place of unknowing.
Mystery, for me, is forgiveness for being flawed and human. It is Spirit at his/her most loving.
