"how they fall"

Dominos, that’s how some things in life work. Little pieces, stacked in lines, curves, etc. All stacked up neatly in order. A long time you spend setting these up, carefully planning, laying out all the pieces. Each one represents something in your life. A vision, a moment, a conversation, a memory. All of them set in a way for you to look at, remember, understand as an individual event. You work for hours, days, months, years, decades, collecting, stacking, lining up. Your understanding of each there as you organize and stack. Wondering what they are all for. Suddenly that one event happens, the catalyst, the trigger event. That one event that triggers the first domino to fall, suddenly there is a cascade event. One knocks the next, each event connecting to the next. All of them tying together. As they fall one by one you watch them, the patterns, the order they fall, the way they link together. All the way to the last one. You stand there in awe, first looking to understand what finally pulled the trigger, why it was pulled, you stop looking at each domino and stand up to see the whole picture. The image of it all, the way it all played out. 

The question is what do you do? Do you sit there, down hearted, broken, wondering why. Do you start to pick up the pieces, place them all back where they were, only focusing on the individual dominos, waiting for that next trigger event to happen and start over? Or do you see it as a whole. Look at the dominos there on the ground, all laid out showing you the whole picture. The way they fell, the picture it painted, the lesson it's trying to show you. Throughout your life there are so many of these events that happen over the course of seconds, days, even years to have all the dominos fall. 

No matter what option you choose, whether to pick them all back up or to step back and take in the "aftermath" determines your next moves. Every event in life brings a lesson with it. What you do with this lesson is what matters. Do you continue to repeat the events over and over, never learning, or do you take in what the universe, god, spirit, whoever is showing you and grow from it. For me this was a hard pill to swallow. Looking back and analyzing my life, I have found that more often than not I was the one who stacked the dominos back up, I ignored the lessons, the trigger event and just went back to stacking. Over and over I made the same mistakes, in choices of friends, lovers, habits, etc. I wasn’t learning. Each time I would ignore all of the things telling me I was ignoring the lesson and went back to stacking. Fear of rejection, not fitting in, not being with someone, not picking compatible people, not wanting to face the truth. Over and over in life, the same mistakes. Each time I set them back up another trigger event, harder and stronger than the last. Life was trying to show me things but I wouldn’t listen. It took everything short of a metaphorical tack hammer to the head to get me to finally understand. 

Over time you give and give and give more of yourself to the dominos, time, energy, all of you, slowly depleting as you work towards "fixing" it. It has been said that the definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over hoping for a different outcome. Hoping that things will work out the way you want just by stacking the dominos again in the same way. Eventually you lose who you are. It was a long time and the help of a dear friend that helped pull me out of the repeat pattern to start seeing what I was missing. 

Slowly you build back up, you stop stacking your metaphorical dominos. You stand back and see the big picture that they are trying to show you. Finally, you understand what you have been shown time and time again. You take the lesson, internalize it, plan for the physical, mental, and spiritual changes you need to make, you grab a few of the dominos to help remind you of the lesson you learned and walk away. Taking what you learned and apply it to your life. It may feel as if things are falling apart, but that’s part of growth. You can’t build a new building on an old broken foundation. Each time rebuilding stronger, until one day you look back and see where you are. You see the rebuilds, you see the strength, but you also see the repairs, the patches, the fixes, all there to remind you where you came from, how far you have come. Death and rebirth, the endless cycle. Do you suffer through the unlearned lessons destined to repeat them, or do you stand up, take the reminder, nod to the universe for finally getting through to you and move on. The choice is yours. Make it.