“The hot desert
sun vaporizes all manner of luxuries.
Then the cold shelter less nights expose the essential guts of life.”
Deserts
declutter the soul. When things are
taken away or lost it forces us to see what remains, what has been hidden under
the clutter we have accumulated and piled. Decluttering can reveal a deeper appreciation
of the things that really matter. It can
eliminate the things that aren’t important, those things that steal our focus
and exposes the true nitty gritty. To
completely embrace a moment, to not see, hear or worry about all the ‘stuff’
but to at the same time see everything a moment has to offer, to take in every
sight, smell, feeling and lesson is a blessing.
We live in a
fast pace world, generation and country that demands us to be connected through
cell phones, laptops and the like. The
funny thing is in this effort to stay connected we have actually disconnected
ourselves from the lives we were meant to and designed to live, the life that
would rejuvenate us, give us joy and allow us to live a life worth living. I
have discovered this is where injuries, job losses, moves etc. become a
gift. These are the moments that give us
the quiet down time we may need to refocus and redirect or to simply get the
rest we need. If we adjust our
perspective to see it as something with a positive to offer rather than a
punishment of sorts we will come out changed with needed lessons learned.
A big lesson for
me this year has been the need to get to the bare bones of some things in my
life. I’m learning that there are
reasons why things haven’t been going as planned and hoped and the answers
rarely have been on the surface. I’ve
had to dig a little deeper to try to start to understand and adjust. So 2017 did not turn out as I had written on
paper but really it can only be seen as a ‘wasted’ year if I allow it to
be. Some of my revelations haven’t been
easy to discover and some have even set me back further than when I first started
and then others have me seeking more answers, but they have all been lessons I
needed and are leading me a step closer to where I want to be. It’s not always easy or comfortable to own up
to the part we are responsible for in what goes astray but it is necessary if
we truly want to change our direction.
Alana Regier
