When the whole world seems to be coming and going and you’re stuck in the same god forsaken place. This is a kind of reality that is seldom spoken of except in negative terms. Stuck in a rut with all the efforts to get out of the rut and the self-beration for not being able to.
The rut is not just a physical rut but something that overarches all aspects of your life -that which can be spoken of and pointed to and that which cannot. A major trait of the rut is no movement, no window of opportunity seeming to present itself. You’re Cornered. Squeezed. You’re Unable with a capital ‘U’. Everything around you is dying , decomposing -including yourself – and you can’t will yourself out of the corner, out of the rut.
The reality of “normal’” becomes almost like a distant dream – a place where life is happening for everybody else around you but not for you. They’re all making decisions, coming and going, getting married, reaching crossroads, overcoming etc. – all part of the normal narrative which includes movement. A narrative which ‘you’ were once a part of.
Part of you remembers this narrative, this way of life like a distant dream. Somehow, somewhere and without warning this narrative dropped away in a seeming abyss beyond the reach of your grasping arms. And you found yourself in a new reality of no possibility, no movement, no ability – none of which can be seen or measured by you or anyone else.
Somehow, somewhere and without warning this narrative dropped away in a seeming abyss beyond the reach of your grasping arms.
So, what do you do? How do you reconcile your life with that of the seeming norm? The old narrative of transformation and movement and evolution. How do you not fall into a deep despair that either you or Life has failed – has made a grievous error. How do you not feel like something has gone terribly wrong and hate your life for it, hate Life for it, hate yourself for it – all the same.
You can’t. All of the above is a rite of passage. This questioning, this falling, this despairing, this grieving is the kind of thing that irks on a soul-level. There’s no way around it. It tugs and tears at a very human need to want to live. To want to be out there, doing things, living, moving, making changes where need be, transforming, etc. – “living your life”, “exercising your autonomy”.
And the torture of watching others “live their life”; come and go, do, be and climb and all of it – is something to be reckoned with. Something to acknowledge and recognize for the torture that it is. The torture of comparing this rut to all that is not the rut- which just happens to be the whole world in action.
That is to say that this rut is something to be acknowledged, spoken of, recognized even honored – in all its agony, with all the despair, and with the amount of patience and resilience needed to be able to withstand it. The wisdom needed to be able to distinguish between “normal” transformation and the kind of transformation that happens in the rut is a distinction of value.
This rut is something to be acknowledged, spoken of, recognized even honored – in all its agony, with all the despair, and with the amount of patience and resilience needed to be able to withstand it.
This value being the need to be reminded to not look outside yourself in comparison to what “normal” is. To understand the parameters and traits of the rut so that you’re not living in the torture of comparing that which cannot be compared, cannot be understood, cannot even be conveyed to others.
That which has no visible features, no outline – to be able to point to it and say, “I am going through this, this is what’s happening to me”. Because on the outside, nothing is happening. Nothing is visible to the onlooker and especially the onlooker coming from the old narrative of normal and everyone “living their life”.
This distinction, this breaking-off point where you fall off the face of the earth and are unable to reconcile this with that. This place, this point is a holy, grace-filled, undoing. And it does not look like you want it to look. And it does not feel like you want it to feel. And it offers nothing to which the old narrative can look and distinguish as “progress”, as “winning”, as “achieving”, or even as “living”.
This distinction, this breaking-off point where you fall off the face of the earth and are unable to reconcile this with that. This place, this point is a holy, grace-filled, undoing.
The whole notion of “living my life” comes to an end here. It falls off the face of the earth and you along with it. And there’s no coming back from that. This is a prayer answered and in this answering all that you once knew, the old narrative with everything and everyone in it, dies. And you die to everyone.
Acknowledge this rut, acknowledge the hardship of it- don’t make it an unknown enemy. When you ask, “how is waking up to truth even possible here?”, it’s possible and this is what it looks like. It looks like this.