Everyday we hear stories about people whose lives have fallen apart due to a job loss, major illness, unexpected loss of a family member, divorce, home foreclosure, an addiction problem, bankruptcy, business loss, a personal tragedy and so on. Perhaps, we are going through a difficult time right now. It is often during these times, when our lives seem so hopelessly broken. Our attempts to put the pieces back together may be slow and difficult. It may seem like wherever we turn, nothing seems to work out. Our quest to restore order and move out of the vulnerable, dark place falls short which leaves us flooded with anger, fear, frustration and disappointment.
If your life seems to have fallen apart, there is hope. Reading Pema Chodron's book, When Things Fall Apart taught me an important lesson about living. Pema Chodron, an American Buddhist teacher, reminds us that falling apart and putting things together is a natural cycle in life. We cannot avoid the falling apart cycle. Now we have been taught if we work hard enough, save our money and prepare for the unexpected before it happens, then we can create a safe, stable and secure life. Keeping our lives together become normal while falling apart is abnormal. Imagine how angry and disappointed we feel when things do fall apart and we cannot pull things back together quickly again. We might be disappointed in ourselves for not working hard enough to prevent such an event. We might feel like life is unfairly picking on us while it supports others. Pema's teaching tells us that we are only creating needless misery for ourselves when we believe that falling apart is not a natural part of life.
Pema believes that our inability to understand the natural cycle of falling apart and putting our lives back together leads to unnecessary suffering. By seeking to keep all the aspects of our lives working smoothly, we may be setting ourselves up for a great shock when we encounter a natural falling apart phase. Our inability to accept falling apart as a natural part of life stems from our inability to accept change as a natural part of life. Our lives were never meant to stay perfectly neat and not endure some type of change. We are growing and learning from our experiences, so we need change. We need our lives to get messy so that we can learn how to start over again and tap into a hidden source of strength within us that we did not know existed.
We have also learned that when things fall apart, it is usually a punishment or the result of bad choices we made in the past. We blame ourselves mostly for our circumstances or we cast ourselves as powerless victims being hurt by a cruel twist of fate. As victims, we see no greater meaning or purpose in our circumstances. Thus, our mantra for living becomes to avoid falling apart and if things do fall apart, we try to put back the pieces as fast as possible without reflecting on the possible lessons of our circumstances. The anxiety and frustration really builds when we discover that we cannot put our lives back together so quickly or our tried true methods of getting our lives moving forward are not working now.
For a moment, just allow yourself to think about the idea of falling apart and putting your life back together as natural life cycles that cannot be avoided. Seeing life from this perspective may help us to stay hopeful and have a calmer perspective when we find ourselves in the middle of those scary, dark falling apart periods. We would not need to see ourselves as victims of our circumstances any more. The pain and all the other emotions that go with some kind of major change or loss would still be there, but we would know we are not wrong in how we chose to live our lives. We are not being punished. We would know that somehow we would find a way to work through the difficulty, but we would not be expecting a quick fix. We still would not know exactly when our lives would improve, but we would know that what is happening to us is as normal as the sun rising and setting each day. We would not need to panic at the first sign of our lives coming undone. Somehow we would have hope that we could handle our circumstances, even if the road gets dark and confusing.
If you are at a low point in your life, take a deep breath. You will survive the bumpy ride. This difficult, uncertain time period is totally natural and normal. You have no reason to blame yourself or anyone else for being at this place. You have no reason to be ashamed for being at this place. Everyone faces periods of falling apart. The circumstances that created the breaking point may be different for another person, but we all have our periods.
There is hope when our lives fall apart. We will eventually work our way through these periods. Be prepared to dig deep within yourself and go to some emotional and even physical places where you thought you would never go. Be ready to make some difficult choices and do some emotional and physical letting go of whatever is not useful any more. Be prepared to embrace some new ideas and options that you may not would have considered for yourself in the past. Be open to completely unrooting life as you have known it for something totally new. Be patient. As much as you may want to move beyond this vulnerable, uncomfortable uncertain stage to a place that is more familiar and safe, you cannot rush progress. Expecting quick and easy results will only create more frustration and disappointment when you discover that all your best efforts are not working.
Understand that falling apart means that we are losing some part of who were and developing a new existence. It is natural to feel that you have lost your sense of who you are as you await for a new part of who you are to emerge. Who you are and what to do may not be clear right now. This is the time to really pay attention to your instincts and let them guide you. Trust that you can live with uncertainty and even some ambiguity about who you are and what your life will look like in the future. The key is to focus on the present moment--this day and this hour and not worry about the tomorrow, next week or next month. Just take your life one day at a time.
Pema Chodron suggests that these dark times are our greatest healing moments--we can learn how to allow the chaos and uncertainty that comes with difficulty to happen without resisting it. We cannot chase these periods away to get relief from the grief, frustration, fear, anger and so on. Maybe it is time that we learned to trust that our difficulties benefit us in powerful ways. Perhaps, it would be wiser to be curious about how we can use our falling apart periods to better ourselves and actually improve our lives.
Copyright©2009 Jeannine Robinson All Rights Reserved