The Light Inside the Tunnel

Dawn.

As new, fresh light creeps its way across the horizon, a new day emerges. Yesterday's challenges begin to morph themselves into today's challenges, and before you know it, those morning rays become incessant reminders of our obligations - to ourselves, our loved ones, and the world.

And then it hits you: Can you ever start over? Is there such thing as a new beginning - a true "brand new day"?
The answer lies in the picture in this post.
Light is an all-pervasive force, making its way anywhere that allows it in. Yet, more often than not, its source remains obstructed or out of sight. While the light continues to shine and reach its destination, the source of its power - the sun - sometimes remains hidden by the clouds, behind the scenes.

It is this very fact of nature that can be translated as an essential tool for understanding one's life. We go through challenges and hardships, day-in and day-out. When we wake up, a little part of us almost expects there to be a renewal of sorts, an opportunity to have a fresh start at our lives. But we know this is not the case. We are simply continuing where we left off, building - or destroying- what we were the day before.

And this is a good thing.

One does not accomplish, succeed, and achieve personal excellence by merely throwing away anything which doesn't look promising, or starting from scratch at every convenient moment. Building a life is a process which requires the harmony and synergy of every experience and challenge we encounter, using every single aspect of our lives to propel us towards a given goal.

And until we realize that the past, present, and future are all just terms we use to split up our lives into a chronological sequence - and that, in truth, they are all one - a singular and unified set of events which are all interconnected - just like you, a human being, are one singular person, and will always be 'you' and no one else - then we will be able to truly grasp what it means to wake up, get out of bed, and continue the development of ourselves; what it means to live a life where every action is united by an integrity and a harmony, where every decision is the next rung on the ladder, rather than a random step in a random direction.

This is key to living purposefully, happily, and confidently. It is this perspective which wakes us up to realize that the light at the end of the tunnel - is really the light inside the tunnel as well. If we can understand that the distance we make between where we are and where we want to be is, in reality, all in our heads - and that if we would just open our eyes to see that the light does reach where we are now, too - the entire concept of a challenge becomes much easier to grasp, and the more we can view them as opportunities rather than obstacles.

And at the end of the day, the difference between the people who live fulfilling, accomplished lives, and those that do not - is the ability to realize the light that is truly surrounding us all the time, embracing us, and showing us the way.

(Photo by DR Photography, facebook.com/davidreichphotography)