“Beautiful In Every Moment”
by Shujaa WA Upendo
Read a sample from the Preface _
PREFACE
There are times in our lives
when everything seems to level out. You reach a point where you’re essentially cruising through existence while all systems are switched on auto pilot. You even convince yourself that you’re coasting right into the sunset.
Don’t get me wrong that life is easy. You’ve just worked hard to pay your dues and then some. You know the ropes to the point where you’re starting to experience inner peace. You have a lot on your plate from jobs to relationships. You’re setting the rules.
At this precise moment is when change charges into your life, unplanned and seemingly unconcerned about you. I’m talking about forceful change where you absolutely have no choice. It’s like a devastating tornado ripping the roof off life as you know it, which leaves you furious, disheveled and bewildered.
Truth comes to us in an infinite array of disguises, parables and mixed signals and sometimes such “gimmes” or gifts can only be unwrapped with experiences with meanings that are cloaked in a shroud. It is then that the storm clouds seem to cast our skies in a never-ending blanket of grey, and it is then that you’ve got to fight to remember a sense of determined courage (despite the odds). You must keep all your darting, numbing senses sharp on the lookout for the barely perceptible signals and voices that bombard us like white noise, yet which once those blocks of buzzing harsh noise are broken down into their correct frequencies revelations will occur. An almost divine clarity offering dialogues and messages that could possibly lead us to some sort of higher truth, if not the greater “truth” that we were unaware existed.
That last little bit is what the following story speaks to. Imagine diving headfirst into un chartered ontological waters and coming out on the shores of the other side a few steps closer to that person that you always thought you were before those growling challenges presented themselves. Blessed is not too strong of a description either: endowed with divine favor and protection, as the dictionary puts it. Blessed! And all the more enriched on a cosmic level, for all that your travails have taught you about yourself. Then again, while each of us thinks he or she lives on a totally separate trajectory than everyone around us, there are some experiences that we will all face in some form, at some point, no matter who we are or what we do.
Truth be said while each of us lives a totally separate course in his or her life, there are some things that we will each face in some form without a doubt. I can’t think of many things that can be as difficult or profoundly saddening as standing watch, day after awful day on end, watching someone you love with all of your being die slowly and painfully. An indescribable, suffocating helplessness haunts the whole experience, even dominating every thought. I can certainly testify to this as I witnessed what happened first hand watching my mother live out the last three months of her life, while she slowly slipped away and eventually succumbed to Breast cancer. It was the single, most agonizing time of my life!
In the time since then, when I look back on what I went through, I’ve come to realize that it was during the cruel chain of events that my ailing mother’s ordeal brought about was a spiritual cleansing of sorts. I felt suddenly rejuvenated, reborn and anointed with the peculiar salve of understanding ushering out, ironically, out of the acceptance of one of my greatest fears, her passing away. What was burned on my brain, as if by laser was this: don’t be afraid of the inevitable or the unknowable whenever you find yourself facing either. When these moments arise, and surely they will, you’ll find yourself surrounded by looming shadows of doubt, but don’t stubbornly question what you instinctually know. Look around the umbrage and face the cold facts that foreboding episodes await, yet never let your heart be deceived by the heavy darkness. Moments of ecstatic light and sheer joy will certainly unfold. Embrace the whole of it. Cry those salty tears and keep swimming across those darkened waves. Feel yourself growing within…
