What happens after a tornado charges through a village? The blistering winds swept it all away. The loud roar and howl haunts the villagers. They become familiar with change, loss, pain, and fear. Where do they go from there? Do they spend their lives watching for the next tornado? Do they learn from the event and move on? Do they pretend it never even existed?
We live our lives in fear. We fear the unknown. We fear the end. We fear pain. Through this fear, we find ourselves stumbling. We find ourselves searching for control. We want to know the answer. We want to predict the outcome. We want to avoid disappointment. Unfortunately, life doesn't really work that way. We aren't in control and the fear will remain.
There's a question we must ask ourselves. What do we do in the wake? For example, when we are looking at the face of death as it tries to snatch up our loved ones, we lose all control. We cannot fight death. The only time we can truly overcome is in the wake of death. There are plenty of avenues to take after losing a loved one. We can give up entirely and let the loss swallow every drop of happiness we have left. We can decide that all hope is gone and that we will never move forward. Or, we can decide that we have no choice but to keep going. We cannot bring someone back from the precipice of eternity. We can only hold them in our hearts until the time we meet death for ourselves.
We all die. That's the horror and the beauty of it. While we feel so alone as death steals from us, we are never more together. The world is full of uniqueness and diversity. The only thing that truly binds us to the world and other human beings is our ability to live and to die. There's some comfort in knowing that when the end does come, plenty of others before me have already taken their exit. There's comfort in the idea of being connected when we feel the most isolated.
What we do in the wake means more than just the wake of death. What do we do in the wake of a job loss? What do we do in the wake of a heartbreak? What do we do in the wake of illness? Tragedy, sadness, and pain will all strike. There's no use in fretting the inevitable. We cannot prevent the bad parts of our lives. We cannot feed off of the good and expect to give nothing in return. So, instead of trying relentlessly to control life, we need to let go. We need to worry about the wake
In the wake, we will find out the tricks to this whole life thing. We will discover how to move on, how to survive, how to stay positive. In the wake, we find ourselves and we find others. We have to stop fearing that life will ruin some of our happiness. Spoiler alert. Life will get the best of you at some point. When you're at the top or even when you're already at the bottom, life will kick and kick and kick until you fall down. The important part? Getting back up in the wake.
