Today is brought to you by Instagram philosophy. And some actual philosophy from Rainer Maria Wilke:
“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”
I cannot say it more poignantly than that. It pinpoints the feeling I’ve had this past year. . . and the predictions I have for this year ahead. I don’t know what beauty and terrors are coming but I want them to happen simply because I want life to keep happening. I numb and cacoon when I need to but ultimately I want to move forward (go onward).
It’s like that feeling I get when I want to watch Titanic again or listen to a Dear Evan Hansen song. Or better yet, rewatch BBC’s Merlin. “Come on,” I think, “Fuck me up.” Because it’s good and it’s painful and I feel everything.
(Side note — someone should stop me from rewatching Merlin. Hard resisting right now. If I wait it out a few more days I think I’ll be safe.)
One of the hardest lessons that keeps getting put in front of me is this: there is no destination. That last bit of the quote, “no feeling is final” has been both freeing and awful for me. It’s helped me move through dark days and dark years. But the reality of impermanence scares me. I like to stay in the good part of the story or tie up my endings with a bow. I hate change as much as the next person, especially if that change means grappling with the truth that some loves end, some chapters finish badly, and there is no predictable story structure to our lives . . . only that we keep breathing until we stop.
I have watched so many destinations crumble in front of me, but Rilke is right. No feeling is final. And even despair shrinks in time in comparison to the life we build around it. I just keep going and allow more of the beauty and the terror. I’ll let my life, if nothing else, keep happening.
With Love,
Natalie