The Inner Reign

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Inner Reign | Inner Thoughts

Life is short, and somehow we’ve been trained to sleepwalk through so much of it.

We wake up, do the things, eat, work, get irritated by minor inconveniences, think about what needs to get done tomorrow, go to sleep, and wake up to do it all over again. Somewhere in all that repetition, we start treating our actual lives like they’re just the stuff we have to get through on our way to something else. Some future experience, some accomplishment, some version of ourselves we imagine we’ll finally get to be once the circumstances are right.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much of life we miss doing that.

Especially this past year, I’ve been discovering something that sounds almost ridiculously simple when I try to put it into words, but the actual experience of it has been pretty fucking profound.

Every moment is an opportunity to practice being the person I want to be.
Even the moments that don’t look like opportunities. Especially those…

I used to think about becoming a higher version of myself in terms of the bigger things. The choices that matter, the difficult conversations, the moments that require courage, the opportunities that stretch me into unfamiliar territory. And those things still matter, obviously. But I’ve started realizing that I don’t have to wait for some extraordinary circumstance to experience myself differently.

I can go to the fucking grocery store.
And I know how that sounds, but sometimes I’ll be standing there talking to a cashier and have this almost metaphysical realization about what is actually happening. Here are two human beings, each carrying an entire universe of experiences, histories, fears, hopes, thoughts, and things the other will probably never know, crossing paths for maybe thirty seconds.
And I get to decide how I show up for those thirty seconds.

I can be distracted, impatient, already mentally halfway into the next thing. Or I can actually be there. I can bring warmth, curiosity, humor, kindness, whatever feels genuine in that moment. I can see the person in front of me instead of treating them like another part of an errand I need to finish.

Something happens when I do that. The experience changes. Sometimes the other person lights up, sometimes we laugh, sometimes it’s nothing more than a small exchange of genuine warmth. But I leave feeling like I actually participated in my life instead of just passing through another piece of it.

I can’t help but wonder how many of those little opportunities we walk straight past every day.
I sometimes feel it driving down the road, too. The same road, the same traffic, the same ordinary stretch of the day can feel completely different depending on the atmosphere I’m bringing into it. Sometimes I find myself looking around with this overwhelming awareness of how interconnected everything is. All these people moving through their own lives, all these things growing and changing and existing alongside one another, and somehow I’m here, conscious enough to witness even a tiny piece of it.
Or I’ll walk outside and see a flower I grew from a seed. And I swear, sometimes I can see God in that fucking flower.

I mean, think about it. Something so small, holding this extraordinary potential for life, responding to sunlight and water and soil, becoming something beautiful through a process I can participate in but could never fully manufacture myself. There’s something about that energy of creation that stops me in my tracks. It reminds me that I’m part of it, too.

We’re all part of it.

And these experiences have been changing the way I think about what it actually means to live spiritually, consciously, intentionally. Because it’s one thing to read about presence, love, faith, awareness, or becoming your highest self. It’s another thing entirely to remember those things when you’re tired, irritated, running late, standing in line, or walking into something you’d really rather not have to face.

I had a pretty profound experience with that just this past week. Experiencing the death of my grandfather.
Before I went up there, I was honestly dreading parts of the experience. I’ve been through hospice before. I’ve sat with someone through the process of dying, right up until their last breath. I know what that experience can involve, and as much as I love my family, there was a very human part of me thinking, “Fuck. Here we go again..”

Because death is sad. It’s uncomfortable. Some of it is frightening. Some of it is physically difficult to witness. There’s no point pretending otherwise.
But before I left, I stopped and I prayed. I got quiet with myself, and somewhere in that space I had this realization.

Here’s another opportunity.

An opportunity to walk into something difficult as the person I’ve been wanting to become. To bring the peace I’ve spent so much time learning about. To be loving, grounded, present, useful. To show up with a kind of faith that isn’t dependent on everything being comfortable or going the way I would prefer.

I didn’t want to simply tell myself those things. I wanted to actually feel them. To arrive already connected to that part of myself instead of waiting for the experience to determine who I was going to be inside it.

So I prayed. I got centered. And before I even got there, I found this genuine peace within myself. Even joy, strangely enough. Not joy about what was happening, obviously, but something deeper. A quiet sense of being able to participate in this part of life, too.

And the experience ended up being as beautiful as it could have been.
There were very difficult moments. There were things that weren’t pleasant. There was grief. Sleepless nights and honestly days I didn’t even eat. But I was calm. I was present. I was content in a way I hadn’t expected to be, and there were moments when I was genuinely happy to be there. Happy to love, happy to help, to witness, to share that space with the people around me.

I don’t know that I would have experienced it that way had I not consciously chosen how I wanted to enter it.

That realization has stayed with me.

Because how often do we let the circumstances of our lives decide who we get to be?

How often do we postpone our peace until something resolves, our joy until something improves, our love until someone behaves differently, our confidence until we feel completely ready?

I’ve been doing so much work over the years to understand myself, to become more conscious, to cultivate faith, to learn how my mind works and how my emotions move through me. And I’m realizing more and more that all of that understanding has to go somewhere. It has to become part of the way I actually live.

Otherwise, what am I waiting for?
Some imaginary day when nothing challenges me? When every relationship is easy, every circumstance is comfortable, every decision feels certain, and I’ve somehow become the fully realized version of myself I’ve been imagining?

That day isn’t coming. Life is going to keep being life.
There will be grocery stores and traffic and bills and laughter and flowers and funerals. There will be bigger rooms that scare the shit out of me, opportunities I don’t feel ready for, days when everything seems possible, and days when getting through the ordinary things takes far more energy than I wish it did.

All of it gives me somewhere to practice.
I’m not going to meet every moment beautifully. Sometimes I’m impatient. Sometimes I’m afraid. Sometimes I’ll forget everything I know and get completely caught up in some ridiculous story my mind is telling me. I’m human, and I don’t want to turn this realization into another impossible standard I have to live up to cuz God knows I put enough of those on myself.

But even noticing that I’ve forgotten gives me somewhere to begin again..

I think that’s part of what has been so liberating about this for me. The person I want to become doesn’t exist exclusively in some distant future. I can experience parts of her now. I can practice her courage in a small conversation, her generosity in an ordinary interaction, her peace in an uncomfortable moment, her curiosity when something doesn’t go as planned.

And the more I do that, the more I realize how much magic is available in places I used to overlook.
Certainly not because every moment is wonderful. Some things are genuinely awful. Some things hurt deeply, and some experiences change us forever. I don’t believe we have to find a beautiful explanation for every difficult thing that happens.

But, I’ve learned that even when I can’t choose the circumstances, there is still something available to me in the way I meet them. Sometimes it’s love. Sometimes courage. Sometimes simply allowing myself to feel what’s happening without abandoning myself in the process.
And sometimes it’s standing in my garden, looking at a flower, and remembering how fucking miraculous it is that any of this exists at all.

We spend so much of our lives waiting for the extraordinary, forgetting that we’re already living inside the most extraordinary thing of all, life.

And life is happening in the regular conversations, the mundane actions, the uncomfortable experiences, the unexpected opportunities, and all those spaces in between.

Don’t get so caught up imagining the life your soul is yearning for that you forget it’s been asking you to show up for the one you’re already living.
Not later.
Now.

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These writings are freely shared, with love. If something here has resonated with you, you’re always welcome to leave a small gesture of appreciation. Never expected, always appreciated. ♡

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