When Life Feels Really Hard and Exhausting

Life can feel really hard, and it can feel extremely exhausting. I know in my life there have been times when I’m in that place, when I’m that uncomfortable, that it feels like others just won’t understand.  

Or, maybe it seems as if I’m being treated different because of my age, or my gender, or my job, or where I’m at. But there is some kind of a judgement that comes, and it feels like people don’t really know me. Or maybe for you it’s like people don’t even know how to have a conversation that’s real, rather than just surface. You can end up feeling sad underneath that, and all alone. 

For some of us, when we go down that slippery slope, it’s a balance between falling into a pretty severe depression or feeling a lot of anger. It’s kind of black and white.  

As I’ve worked with others, and myself, with this problem where life just feels so hard and so exhausting, what I’ve discovered is possible is that we can be guided by a deeper source of wisdom in our life. It is possible. When we are guided by this deeper source of wisdom we go through experiences where we discover we actually make sense! That even when we were down in our depression or our anger, and we take time to be in the uncomfortableness of it with accompaniment, then our deeper source of wisdom guides us to understand that we make sense.  

We can recognize where we are on our journey. Not only can we recognize where we are on our journey, we can begin to recognize where others might be, and stay curious and open-hearted with them. Then we can nurture conversations. I actually like to nurture conversations with myself first, and when I’m in my heart there I’m able to be inspired to nurture conversations with others to stay relational.  

When we are in that kind of an experience, it’s possible to experience a sense of oneness in life. From there (I was inspired to hear another person speak about this) there can be the experience when we are in that field of oneness that we recognize others, even when we think they don’t understand, we can recognize them and say, “You are a part of me that I do not yet know.” There is an openness to getting to know this other being. With curiosity and an open-heart.  

So, taking the time to be in our experience is to understand “what is it that I wish to contribute to my people, to the world, to the oneness, to the generations that go on?” 

One of the things I wish to practice is considering others, considering how the actions, and the viewpoints, and the way I show up in this world, how it actually impacts and ripples forward into the lives of everyone else. Especially my own children and grandchildren and then their children.  

What I want to bequeath to them, and to the culture, and to the community that they are going to be nurtured in and grow up with, is to have the experience that everyone matters and that they make sense. Also, for there to be a practice of a way of being; slowing down to focus on our heart, to embody our life experience, and to take time to do this in relationship with others.  

What might that look like? It’s coming into Presence. I like to put my hand on my heart, because it supports me to focus there, then I bring to my mind someone or something or some place that brings up gratitude from within me. Then, I focus on that gratitude and allow it to develop into compassion filled with warmth and resonance. It fills up all of my energy field and then I send it forth from there. It’s a practice of loving kindness, first with myself and then out with the world.