Wait Until Your Soul Reaches You

We are in a hurry, too much of a hurry. We balance on the melodies that stress and anxiety play, which in turn feed off  the myriad of responsibilities and pressures that carry their weight on our shoulders. Thus, what overwhelms us, the passage of time, happens without us noticing. All this causes us to disconnect from our “I”, from our soul. A disconnection that negatively affects ourselves.

We don’t realize that we live on autopilot as it has somehow become our default state. On many occasions we act out of inertia, without thinking too much about it and without enjoying the activity itself. Thus, we come to the conclusion that days are missing hours, hours are minutes … and the soul is time.

Don’t run, let your soul reach you

If you like, before continuing, let’s travel to Africa and learn a story.

“A long, long time ago, an expeditionary ventured into the most inhospitable territories of Africa. Only his porters accompanied him. They all carried a machete to force their way through the waiting vegetation. He had only one goal in mind: to advance quickly at any cost.

If they came across a river, they crossed it in the shortest possible time. If a hill got in the way, they quickened their pace so as not to waste a minute. However, the porters suddenly stopped in their tracks.

The expeditionary was surprised, I may have only been a few hours on the march. So he asked them:

– Why did you stop? Are you already tired? We’ve only been on the road for a few hours.

One of the porters looked at him and replied:

– No sir, we are not tired. But we have moved too fast and therefore we have left our soul behind. Now we have to wait for it to catch up with us again ”.

This is a beautiful African tale that reflects the danger of falling behind when we want to move too fast or when it becomes the main objective, if not the only one. Fixing our attention on the goal may shorten the travel time. However, that time discarded for our senses, will be the currency with which we pay the price for arriving earlier.

Sometimes the rush is also an excuse to ignore the pain that comes from our wounds. We pass on them, we ignore them, but they do not cease to be present and limit us. We believe that ignoring them will make them disappear. In many cases perhaps, but in others the wounds will need another type of care, such as disinfection or some point. Distinguishing one from the other is still an expression of emotional intelligence.

Your wounds need time to heal

As much as we ignore our emotional wounds, this attitude does not prevent them from leaving their imprint on our brain. In fact, we know that any trauma we have experienced or that which has caused us a significant emotional impact in our childhood we carry over into adulthood. If we do not see it, if we do not stop to reflect on what happens to us in order to solve it, the wounds will not heal, they will remain open.

All the negative experiences we go through leave a deep neurological footprint and will continue to bleed no matter how hard we try to ignore them. Strength in many cases has nothing to do with clenching our fists and moving on, but with studying the cliff and finding a way to build a bridge that allows us to save it.

We talk about looking sadness in the eye to know what it wants to tell us, of finding a way to expend the energy that emanates from negative emotions without harming anyone or of giving anxiety a moment of respite so that it recovers its normal heartbeat. : that frequency in which it helps us and gives us encouragement, instead of consuming it.

What happens to our soul when we don’t stop and try to go on as if nothing had happened? Well, if the precipice is very large, our normal stride will not be enough to overcome it and we will end up rushing into the void. Thus, we transform difficulties that before we could have solved alone and in a short time into very serious difficulties for which we will need help and even longer.

Let us intelligently evaluate our emotions . All of them have a message for us, intelligence is in deciphering it and for this our attitude has to give us the opportunity to do so. Otherwise we will end up surrounded by emotions that will make us feel very strange in our own self.

We lose ourselves in that sea of ​​responsibilities, which is often drawn as that bottomless carpet under which to hide our problems. Moving forward is important, but it is even more important not to miss what happens in the meantime. The currency with which we pay to look ahead, ignoring the pain in our soul, is time. The same one that escapes through the wounds that we do not close and that more than ignorance needs affection.

Images courtesy Samatha Gross