#4. Life has completely random elements to it which can be positive or horrific.

Some things in life have clear causes and effects. However, sometimes you will get surprise beautiful experiences, connection, beauty, or joy far beyond your wildest dreams. And, sometimes you will get surprise violence, horrible grief, trauma, or despair beyond what you think you can withstand.

Life and how things mete out is unfair: there is no Bank Account in the Sky keeping you at a zero balance overall. It can be heartbreaking, enraging, or inspiring to see to whom and how life experiences play out. Maybe what goes around comes around and maybe it won’t, but it doesn’t matter. You still never know what is on deck for you.

Waiting on love to appear teaches us this lesson as well as waiting for pain to disappear does: one day it just does so. You can’t plan for everything in life, you can only live as best you can from the present moment.

Asking “why me?” can not produce an answer because of this chaotic randomness. All this makes life magical, terrible, special, and also common among beings.

This is life: take it or leave it.

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Lessons from 2013 is a mini-series dedicated to all the ways folks make it through in general, and to my personal resilience gathered from a bad year. See the series here:  http://www.damienluxe.com/category/top-10-lists/