There’s a time when your life finally, finally starts to come into focus. When you start to actually like who you are and don’t care what other people think of you. Talk about sweet relief. It’s a moment I had really started to doubt would come. I guess I just had to count to 56. Oh and roll up my sleeves to do “the work.” Soul excavating, difficult but so worth it.
I remember discovering a kaleidoscope in the variety store as a child. I took it to my mother and asked her what it was and she showed me how to look through the viewer with one eye (took a few tries) and turn the other end at the same time. I was fascinated by the turning and transforming and the colors.
It’s just occurred to me that my life up to this point has been very much a kaleidoscope. But I misread it. I saw and felt it as a train wreck (or car wreck x4). As it hits me today, all the incredibly hard times, pain, grief, shame, loss, despair, fear, and heartbreak have polished me like my favorite sea glass made smooth by the pounding surf and sand. It feels much better to see life as a kaleidoscope, with purpose and meaning, not because I wasn’t enough. Fun fact: we’re all enough.
They say perception is everything and now I know why to this day if I come across a kaleidoscope, I’ll pick it up and feel that same girlhood feeling. I appreciate it as a metaphor for life. Who knew a dollar store toy could be all that, proving that it really is the simple things that can mean so much.