Whether you’re having the best day of your life or the worst, every feeling you have passes like clouds in the sky.

Passing clouds and blue skies… sounds so wonderful and yet positively awful.

We can’t freeze time. And would we really want to?

Being unable to pause time is frustratingly awful because we can’t freeze still the amazing, magical, deeply inspiring and nourishing moments. Moments like a baby’s first smile, the sound of our child’s laughter, the expansive feeling when you receive incredibly good news, the flutter in your stomach when you first feel love.

Those moments pass to become memories. We can reminisce about them, but we can never quite feel those moments fully again.

But the wonderful news is that the most horrible, painful, heart-ripping, gut-punching moments of life pass too. Perhaps they leave scars that never completely heal. And more than likely, you can recall the terrible events in your life more clearly than the happy ones.

The point is, it all passes.

This is comforting when we feel burdened with sadness, discouraged by failures, worried about the unknown, or in a panic over the long list of what scares the bejeezus out of us.

Knowing the feelings and the moment will pass doesn’t fix how we feel, but it certainly can provide the glimmer of hope that we won’t be stuck, lost in the darkness, endlessly.

The night never lasts forever.

Time stands still for no one, the saying goes.

And therefore, so too do our lives continue to count down.

And if we’re on a count down, and time is passing by, along with our very lives… shouldn’t we learn to be more fully present in the now? And find ways to embrace it all?

“It’s like, wait a minute, this is it. This is your life. We only have moments. This moment’s as good as any other. It’s perfect.” – Jon Kabat-Zinn, scientist and mindfulness pioneer

Experience this moment fully – for in a moment – it will pass.

You are not defined by what you feel

There is a certain calm that can seep into us when we imagine our feelings as separate from who we truly are inside.

The fears and anxiety our minds create are not born into us. We gather them as we experience life and grow older from our environment, from what we have lived through, learned about and imagined.

From our joys, our disappointments, our achievements, and our pain.

The experiences of our reality threaten our capability to dream, to have hope, and to find simple joys.

“Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.” – Guillaume Apollinaire, poet

I’m suggesting we take time to relearn how to dream. To stop judging each moment. To step outside of the hurt, fear and anxiety. To separate ourselves from passing feelings, rather than define ourselves as if those feelings are who we are.

Consciously resist labeling

Let’s not label ourselves nor those we love as any particular adjective. After all, we are complex. We can feel sad, happy, lazy, excited, bored, lonely, depressed, exhilarated – all in a single day. Is it possible to feel all of those feelings in even a few hours? (asking for a friend)

As much as you may relish the moments you feel optimistic, enthusiastic and confident – allow yourself the moments that are not as shiny and bright without feeling defeated.

The evolution of you

Learn to be kinder to yourself. And to those you love.

Learn to love yourself for all the moods and feelings that you are. Notice them come and go.

Learn to be loving and non-judgmental to your kids, partner, friends. We can’t conditionally show love to people we care about only when they behave as we’d like them to or when we’re in a happy mood. That’s not love.

Learn to be mindful

Enjoy the good moments fully and watch the bad moments float by. The worst of storms never last very long. ( I don’t dare get all sappy and mention that the rainbow usually comes out after the storm but, ya know what… it happens to be true!)

It is possible to struggle and to overcome.

It is absolutely possible to continue to grow, heal and evolve and to learn ways to wrestle our minds into submission and encourage mindfulness and deliberate positivity as a daily habit.

We can feel the shadows cast on us by the angry storm clouds overhead and then consciously encourage them to float past the same way they floated in.

“No longer look for an experience to be other than what it is. Not need an experience to make me happy but instead to make me grow… Resist judging life or myself for not being perfect and instead embrace the wholeness of the imperfections.” – Shefali Tsabary, The Awakened Family

Flip the switch.

Yes, we grow from pain too, but much of the juicy, meaningful good stuff comes when we flip to positivity.

You and you alone are entirely in control of how you view the moments of your life.

Cheers to being present. To being mindfully conscious of the moments of our life, more so after fifty than ever before. To letting the stormy damaging moments come on through and to watching them float right on by.
– Marlene

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