Depths previously unknown are encountered, as is the cause, how we got there, unknown. Bewilderment, zero mental range, motivation at an all time low.
Depression isn’t just the embodiment of sadness. We are sad, aggrieved no less, because of the debilitating, doubting, drudgery nature of it.
Exhaustion dominates, the never ending search for the cause of the chagrin in combination with the disarrayed state that has overtaken our existential gait.
Life as it is —
one challenge after another,
and we can only take them
one at a time.
With no greater test to our endurance than this, we remain if we remain, and what eventually and ultimately beckons is the wisdom of ascension — at the rightest of times.
Wisdom as opposed to resilience or some other fad word or concept for the character to overcome, validates the person to navigate their way out of the temerity of crisis. It’s wisdom gleaned. It’s also wisdom, the skill, a craft exacted as we look back through the rear vision mirror of truth.
Looking back as if from the rim of the volcano as it bubbles furiously below, we’re not so much mystified as to how we got to safety; we’re thankful, grateful, and blessed with soul knowledge attained, banked; nonetheless, we’re left wondering if and when the black dog will bark its way back into us.
But wisdom teaches us in the end that those worries cannot prevent a recurrence, so we rationalise and arrive at the choice of faith over fear; a better choice, for both choices cost the same.
Choice is power, and wisdom is the right way.
Wisdom is the right choice to do the right thing, and ultimately it’s the easier way than what seems easy at the time. Wisdom is worthy of our trust. She does not let us down.
Admonished by the wisdom it took to extract ourselves from the precipice threatening a chasm to plummet to fathoms below, we recognised part of the extraction was due to the time it took to work our way through the labyrinth, and part of it was the inevitable changing of our circumstances — change is inevitable.
Surviving what otherwise imperils us is part grace and part patience, and with age comes the wisdom to tell of the tale; a wealth of blessed lived experience.
One of the best things about getting older is spiritual composure outbound from reflective practice. The capacity to observe meaning from and of life.