I’ve been choosing to find joy and delights each morning.
I’ve been practicing talking to myself about what I’m grateful for
and granting myself permission to enjoy every moment throughout each day.
But I couldn’t sleep the other night.
During the day before, someone made me feel stressed and anxious.
They tried to make me feel guilty for something that I knew wasn’t my fault.
Many people don’t know how to let go and trust the world
so they try to make it easier on themselves by passing their pain onto others,
like a virus.
So the other night, I was feeling the pain they passed onto me
and I couldn’t sleep.
I started to cry.
I knew that that pain wasn’t my own
and that I had the power to remove it.
But how?
The mind can be a dangerous place
if we let pain control it.
Laying in my bed, I was going through all the tactics to try to feel better:
blaming the person,
ridding of our friendship entirely,
pitying myself on how unfair the world is,
having a conversation with them about it.
But everything seemed to make me feel even more stressed and anxious.
Then one thing finally let me breathe.
One thing finally released all the tight tension in my body.
One tactic finally calmed my mind
and allowed me to rid it of all negative thoughts.
Forgiveness.
When I told myself that person only passed me pain because they themselves were in pain,
then the pain didn’t seem intentional.
I realized that pain was not meant for me.
The pain itself was something individual, alive.
Malificent.
Pain tries to bring everyone down,
like a virus.
I suddenly felt for my friend.
I felt sorry that they became sick with the virus,
and that it was clouding their entitled joy.
Once you realize that your pain doesn’t have your name on it,
it can no longer be “ours.”
It can no longer affect us.
We can always stay joyful when we see the pain that has intruded into others
and forgive them.
That was an epiphany.
Pain is not a part of the human condition, it’s something we accept.
Pain is the only virus that we, our minds, can stop from passing along to the rest of the world.
So I wiped my tears, took some breaths,
and slept.
Ali Walks Around 