Life is Just an Experience
Often, after we do something, people will ask us - “how was it?” And we respond - “it was ____.” Our answer to that question can hold a lot of weight. Our words can often define what that experience was for us, place it in a 2d box and impact how we remember it. But our experiences of life are not black or white. Nothing is just “bad” or “good” or “exciting” or “boring” etc…
Sometimes trying to label our experience takes away the truth of the experience for us.
If someone asks me how my day was and I say good - it leaves out all the colour and complexity that my day contained.
It takes the life out of the day.
And at the end of the day, it all just is what it is.
It is just an experience.
We’re all having an experience. All of life is an experience.
The big, the small, the high, the low… it’s all the same.
What if we could just see all of life as an experience? An experience to notice and observe, not attach to.
We contort and control our experiences by adding stories and labels onto them.
Life is so beautiful at its core. Life is simple at its core. When we can take away all the excess that is automatically piled on as part of this human experience - when we are just energy experiencing - it all becomes so much simpler.
When someone asks me how I am or how something was I’ve begun saying “it was an experience.” Because unless I have the ability to sit down with them and go into the details of what I experienced, it doesn’t serve to label it.
With that being said, we are humans having this experience. So we are going to have thoughts and stories and labels… the goal is to not get rid of them completely or judge ourselves when we think negatively about something. That is impossible. Those thoughts and feelings and inclinations are part of being human.
I believe the goal is to sit with each experience, to understand the stories we create in our minds, to see what may be laying beneath the labels, and to bring ourselves back to the truth of each moment. The truth being - presence, peace, awareness.
It starts with creating that pause before reacting. It starts with living in awareness instead of reactivity. It starts with living with intention.
And yet still —I hope that life gives us all the experiences we desire - not only the experiences that we need, but those that we desire. True heart desires.
I hope we all get to experience the presence of peace. I hope we all get to experience the art of witnessing life, not only reacting to it. Because that is where we can see the love that reverberates below all the excess.
