Implosions

This week was full of surprises. I cannot say they were positive surprises. I cannot say that I was happy. I can say that I was surprised. Actually, it was a negative kind of surprise. It felt like an explosion.

But it didn’t really feel like an explosion at the same time. It felt like my perceptions of reality and identity caved inward and crumbled. It felt like an implosion.

Life is extremely messy sometimes. It is incredible: the fragilities, the tensions, the occasional event that is very disruptive and feels almost random. It is surprising. It is shattering. And it is especially disruptive and surprising and shattering for an optimist.

I feel like I am an optimist. I am optimistic about humanity, about our nation, about my life, and about existence in general. I think our world is full of good, and we are moving towards goodness. We are slowly bringing more and more heaven to earth.

Or at least I think we are.

This week was full of surprises, from elections to aspects of my personal, professional and social life that, if you were to ask me about them a week earlier, I would have been completely optimistic about. The general movement of life seemed as if it was to be okay. In fact, I thought everything was going to keep getting better. I was not expecting surprises on Tuesday or Friday, or this whole week in general. I was not expecting implosions.

I can only hold fast and know that when things fall, the only direction often possible is forward and upward. Only broken things are capable of being fixed. I can tell myself that I can keep going, in spite of surprises, in spite of fragilities and in spite of implosions.

And often in the randomness, in the fragilities, there are pockets of grace and hope. The number of heart to heart conversations I have had at the early hours of the morning this week have helped me in facing the implosions and the toppling of the structures in my life that I worked so hard to maintain.

I just hope these implosions don’t crumble the heart of an optimist.

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