I am not a fan of tattoos. I don’t like them for many reasons, since I am working on the body and I receive so many information out of a clean natural skin that maps all of one’s emotional and physical state. But if for a reason legitimate and just for my life I was ever to have one that would be one phrase that I would like to accompany me forever.
七転び八起き (Nanakorobi yaoki) meaning “Fall down seven times stand up eight”. I don’t remember when I first heard this Japanese proverb but it was love at first sight. Profoundly simple and accurate; to get through life you need to rise again after any fall, any failure, any loss.
Most of the times losses or failure are nothing but logical. They make absolutely no sense and no responsibility can be assumed on anyone’s watch. Life is simply not a logical path that guarantees answers, results and success.
You could be looking for reasonable premonitions, red flags or signposts but usually, although not always, those vital signs or their significance does not become clear to you exactly when you need it. Too much stress or pressure and you miss them at the blink of your eye. Usually, but not always.
Emotions, overrated as they are and supported or exaggerated even, by hormonal fluctuations and to a much lesser extent by life events, will command your reactions and eventually your life patterns. You might find yourself spending most of your daily time re-programming and re-aligning the internal dialogue between your thoughts and your heart, attempting to ease these forces of nature so you can enjoy some piece of mind and some time off the hard work of finding meaning amidst all chaos.
For me it is sad that even the most intense emotions that kept me awake, in love or in fear with life, people or notions, with excitement and significant breakthroughs, they too fade away. All intensity is ephemeral, leaving me wondering if events took place or if I imagined them, as I cannot recall why I was once that excited about something that now seems trivial and ordinary. And for those who pass the test of time I notice that my selective memory changes the narrative to a more heroic meaning that justifies the struggle behind it and renders me a sense of self-fulfillment and pride. As human and as vital for my sanity this may be, I fear it is lacking the authenticity of the original event that opened me once to a first new life experience that in one way, shape of form, with its own non-logical way, shaped me into my present state. None of this is logical but everything has its own logic.
This search for meaning and understanding of ephemeral and subjective principles could turn into a vicious circle of endless inner thoughts, non-productive in nature and in results, which consume extreme amounts of energy. Brilliance and ingenuity have a very thin line with insanity that not even strong individuals like Nietzsche avoided. Where you look into and where you invest your vital energy is a self-saving life practice that will shape your future.
There comes a time for everything that you need to let go. Those little-big-issues that you keep in special places in your mind and therefore into your heart, that there have always been there, carried, preserved, remembered in an anniversary like way, will not leave you by their own will.
There is no use being in a constant dialogue with them. A thinking process will not reveal to you more than you already know, even if you trick your brain to think that what you do is important, it brings attention to details and allows a thorough understanding of different facets, you are actually building a holistic approach, and a lot of other similar beautiful noble ideas that simply do not serve the economy of your life. This is stolen energy; energy invested in areas you cannot affect change.
There is a fine line, after which is time to let go and move on. Bring your awareness back to the body. Allow the energy to leave the penthouse suites of your brain and move down, to the stomach, the belly, the pelvis, the legs and finally ground it into deep roots that go all the way to the center of the Earth. Allow your fall; everything to fall down on the ground and slowly even lower, into the center of the Earth. Allow her to receive it. It is no longer your job, your duty, your karma. Let iτ all go. In one block or little by little, moment by moment, piece by piece. Whatever it takes because otherwise it will take you away from you.
Fall down my friend for the seventh time so you can rise for the eighth.