Contrast, again

Contrast.

This single word took up so much space in my brain when I traveled to India at the beginning of my sabbatical. As the year continued, the lessons around contrast kept coming. Experience after experience, I learned so very much.

Of course, just when I think I understand it, the universe decides to remind me that I am only starting to unravel the mysteries. This pesky little idea of contrast has been rattling around my head nonstop the past four months. And my perspective is constantly evolving.

As I prepare to leave Colorado, yet again, I am pulled into reflection per usual. Contrast; this one word defines my time here too well.

The first four months of 2025 have been a lot for everyone. Collectively, the world has shifted. I have not felt this level of collective stress and uncertainty since 2020. It has felt as if everyone I meet is moving through a season of unparalleled challenges.

Personally, it has felt as if I have been moving through seven lives all at once. I am not sure I can fully express it in words but this time has been profound in the ways it has altered my being. I needed to return to Colorado to do this work. It was not something I could have experienced while floating through the world detached.

After over a year without an anchor, I needed stability. Yet, as I found it, the world shifted into this time of chaotic instability. It was as if the universe was mocking my timing while also reminding me of so many lessons.

I have this insatiable desire for stability that comes from deep within. I do not believe I am alone in this. It feels like human nature to be pulled towards certainty and to move away from instability. Perhaps, we are all seeking certainty and stability with every action, consciously or unconsciously, every day.

It reminds me of the quote by Carl Jung. "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it Fate."

In a way, I had to seek stability by returning to Colorado to remember that all stability is an illusion. I am still processing how Colorado not so gently nudged me to bring a lot more to my conscious awareness than I felt prepared for. I needed physical stability to have the courage to peer into all the instability that is still hidden deep within.

Again, I am pulled back to this concept of contrast. I returned to routine, stability and consistency by coming home to Colorado. These are all things I truly love and crave daily in my life. By doing this, it allowed me to unravel and feel the most unstable internally than perhaps I’ve ever felt.

The past four months brought me the highest highs and the lowest lows. Often, showing up side by side. I will not get into the weeds of details but it has been so much to hold. Lows always feel sticky and painful but we don’t often talk about how precarious highs can feel too.

It is funny because I imagined that my year of travel would change me in irrevocable ways. And truly it did. It was also just the beginning. It cracked me open so the tiny seedling within could find its way into the light. It gave me the courage to allow myself to feel irrevocably changed by every single day. To remember that nothing stays the same day to day, including ourselves.

Allowing myself to be more conscious of this constant wave of change we exist within has been destabilizing and freeing at the same time. Again, highs and lows, all at once. Contrast everywhere.

It is laughable that this thing we all seek, stability, may always feel as if it is an inch away from our fingertips. Just one more step and we will be there, but the carrot keeps moving. Forever slightly too far to reach, in the most frustrating of ways.

It is only when we begin to laugh at this cosmic joke we are all living that we can soften. Knowing that whatever direction we step, nothing will change and everything will change. Holding the contrast of these two opposites in one hand is not an easy thing.

I still stumble over this truth daily. But the past four months have taught me how to collapse into this knowing and return to my feet in real time. What a gift Colorado has been to me.

This state has witnessed me become a million different versions of myself over the past ten plus years. And a million more over the past four months. There is truly nowhere else I would rather do life. These mountains have become part of my DNA, intertwined with every molecule of my being.

As I prepare to drive away from this state that has taught me so much, gratitude swallows my being. Gratitude for every lesson in contrast that I experienced that allowed me to hold this time with grace. Gratitude for all the good and hard things that showed up in my life. Gratitude for the support network that I intentionally formed over the years, intuitively knowing I would need it soon enough. Gratitude for the sunshine, the mountains, the wild and the peace that Colorado will always gift me.

Life is hard right now. Life is also incredibly beautiful right now. Both are absolutely true. The contrast of this is what life is all about.

Don’t let the fact that stability may always be slightly out of reach stop you from taking a step towards it every day. Everything will change. And nothing will change too. That is life.