It is time
I've never been a massive admirer of spirituality, mainly when it defines the abstract and promises a wishful guiding light. However, sometimes life gets horrible, wherein every day is miserable and living by the day is not advice, but a punishment. I have reasoned before in my musings that one acceptable application of religion is when people use it to find their innate peace, in their own quarters, away from other people. Accepting it for others is one thing, but practising it for oneself is quite another, and when my life was going nowhere, my once steady and stuck needle wavered a little and in came the scope to practice things I once thought unworthy of doing.
The needle hasn't moved, though. I am unsure of where it lies right now, but it is not at the bottom of the unbeliever's abyss. The abyss is, as abysses should be, very dark and very deep, and thus it takes a while for things to sink or resurface. 'A while' is a very inaccurate and general term for estimating time, and is quite often used to 'buy' more time.
So as I stand at the edge of the abyss again, this time facing the other way, and willing to way far away from it, I am tempted to look back at things that merely occurred until now. I do not know yet how they have affected me, or whether they have shaped me to be what I am right now. Maybe I will know in a while.
Difficult times bring about the need for penance, and I do not mean penance in the old, mystical sense. Modern penance is relentlessly staying in, showing up, and picking up the shards of the broken soul to fuse them back into something similar, but different. Penance in the modern day is about patience, weeping, hair pulling and eating disorders. It also involves a fair share of halts, wherein hibernation seems like a relief. But in modern penance, you have to get up eventually. Sleep is not an option.
A big penance of mine bore fruit recently, and it has finally allowed me the courage to dream again. The dreams on the branches of my eyelids have begun to ripen with the warmth of small wishes, and far ahead of me is the tree with the branches - bright, beautiful and bountiful. The tree might just be the spiritual la la land that is promised, but I believe moving away from the abyss is a massive step in itself.
So I decide not to look back. Instead, I look forward, with blinds on my temples allowing me tunnel vision only in one direction. And as I take my first step, I realise I am ready. I grasp that it is time.
And within all that, I re-invite you to my journey back towards myself, on a voyage of discovery, on a tread of epiphanies, on the sea of suffering.
It is time for me to right the wrongs of things I've done with myself over the last decade.
It is time for me to bring in and give out the love that I never have shared before.
It is time for me to move, keep on moving, and not look back.
It is time for me to live a better life.
It is time for me to wet my eyes.
It is time for me to laugh.
Welcome.