Was it worth it?
Reflections on life and love and turning 40.
The last month of my 30’s started with a trip to New York and Lancaster, USA, to visit friends. I called it “Farewell to my 30’s trip”. I used those last thirty days to reflect on forty things I was grateful for in life. Ordinary things like coffee, cooking and baking, living on my own, traveling, photography. As well as more profound things like healing, forgiveness, a big dream come true, Jesus, and having foxes in my garden. Then, I saw a question in my Wild Heart Writers Group. “Was it worth it?”*
This question haunted me for days. I am not good with answering general questions, so part of me wondered, “what is ‘it’?” Life? My journey of healing? The fact I loved and lost?… and still loved and still lost and still loved and…you know how it goes by now.
Initially, no matter which of those covered the ‘it’, my answer would be “I don’t know”. Maybe.
What if it wasn’t worth it?
Yet I only know how to go forward, even when I look back. Even though there are times when I do not know how to let go of a person, a desire, a feeling, a dream. I don’t know why some dreams won’t leave. You can shut the door in their face, but they will kick and scream and shout from within gasping for air. Even though giving up presented itself like closure to a disappointed heart; still, I did not know how to quit. So perhaps somewhere deep inside me, deeper than words can reach, perhaps in those crevices and ravines of my soul, I hold a conviction that it is worth it.
It did not ‘feel’ like it a lot of the time.
What would a diamond say after the process of being sharpened and its beauty shown out of the charcoal of its life? What would it say if we asked it, “Was it worth it”? A diamond would shine. That’s the only thing a diamond can do. A diamond would be what it’s meant to be. It would not argue that the sharpening was not painful, or that it did not have to die many deaths in order to finally become. A diamond would ‘be’ itself, and we would know, without a doubt that its answer cannot be summed up in a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. There is something deeper within that urges the diamond to allow the process to continue, to sharpen another corner, and yet another. Others will tell the diamond that they never knew its beauty was so exquisite. But they also never knew the cost.
Not the price someone would pay to have it as an ornament; the cost that made this diamond what it is — exquisite and beautiful and shiny and multicolored. Same with my experiences of life. I lost love more times than I care to count. And yet, one cannot lose the essence of her existence. These heart-wrenching journeys help us to finally become.
I healed in places I did not even know were hurting. A lot of it was painful and I did not like that. I don’t yet fully have what I want to have in life; not the core of it, which is always to do with love. But if I were a diamond, I would simply allow the process to continue, knowing it has been making me into who I was always supposed to be. Knowing that my essence cannot but allow it, even if I dislike it, or I find at times that tears are too many, and laughter is paid with a high price.
The ‘worth’ here is costly, but maybe that affirms that in the deepest of ways it is ‘worth it’.
Yet, this journey towards love is not for the weak. And it is not for the strong. For when we are both at once, then we know we have what it takes to endure it. Then hopefully, eventually time will come when the sharpening will quieten down, and the diamond will remain. I am not there yet, I hope soon might be the day. Until then, I will remind myself that the cost means the diamond will be more beautiful. Even if that diamond is myself.
*This question is from “30 Questions to Bring you Closer to Your Wild Heart”, a wonderful online writing course run by Jeanette LeBlanc.
© Iva Beranek
