Where Are You Going?

Full Circle

by Paula Nelson

Full Circle, the term remains a mystery to me. Is this a place that I am headed, have I been there before, will I know when I arrive. How many times do we “come full circle” in our lives? Does this mean that, I begin a journey, only to arrive with the same information that I left with? I began a journey a couple of months ago, with a new friend, and made the choice to see where this journey may take us. Each day I arise with the knowledge that I have to choose to step aside from what I have known in the past, and instead put one foot in front of the other. This will clearly put me on a different path, a path that is new and unseen, fearful at times, as it is filled with new thoughts, new ideas, and a possibility of pain, and/or love. A new path is rarely easy, and because I love the out of doors, the analogy I see is a path wrought with, roots, rocks, and potholes. My paths always have cliffs, switchbacks and unknowns lurking in the trees. But I am encouraged forward by….well by what….I will call it my Spirit. My Spirit encourages me to forge forward and experience this new path, not just slip along, hoping against hope, that I miss the debris, and the injuries, but with foreknowledge and determination. I set my sight on the path ahead not willing to waver but with that, determination of mine, to experience the fullness of life with all that may come to me in the midst of it. If I am indeed to, come “Full” circle, I am determined to “arrive” with more than, that which was in me, when I left.

Pain and Love, (I am not suggesting abuse), I believe travel on the same wind. I do not yet know how to separate the two if indeed it is at all possible. In my life, as in the lives of many, we have felt both pain and love with such intensity that we thought we might perish. We have experienced both, pain and love, enough to decide against ever “knowing” either again. I believe at this point we become masons; we begin the task of building walls. These walls are built to protect us from the further destruction that loves causes, we choose therefore against knowing the pain that loves brings with it. Remember that if pain and love ride on the same wind we cannot have one without the other. But can we truly live without love? Do we want to? Or maybe more to the point can we “live” without love.

My thoughts are this, what if there is a truth involved, a reality that it is impossible to have one without the other, love without pain, pain without love. The truth being that we will cause pain, and that we will be hurt, by those we love the most.

I pondered that, if indeed this is fact, we are wasting precious time protecting ourselves from a possible inevitable. I believe that while we spend time protecting ourselves against pain we are also protecting ourselves against love. Love and pain come on the same wind!! The wall of protection inhibits both!! So maybe, I am thinking, the key is to accept that indeed we will cause hurt and know hurt, and to choose to move through this hurt, instead of blocking against it. We will survive, we will continue on in Wisdom and Courage. Might we choose instead to allow ourselves to experience the hurt, pain, and frustration that love brings with it because we may then experience a greater love on the other side?

I know now that I will never experience the love that I so desire to be a part of my life unless I allow the reality of, hurt felt, to be part of the “Full Circle”.