Getting High on Recovery

You can’t get away from the dust, it’s inside of you. But you can make peace with it.

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Dust.

You are covered in it.

It’s in your DNA, mixed in with your personality, your health, your propensities and your essence. Even your shadow is full of dust.

The best relationships are dusty relationships.

Not because they are unused. Good relationships are full of life and sweat and work and pain and hard things ground down into fine dust.

Becuase life is dusty.

Just try leaving something in the same place for a while, soon you will have 10 years of dust sitting on it, like a softly purring cat.

Dust contains just about anything you can break down into a tiny element. Then the air does it’s thing and takes it for a ride. Dust can travel for as far as the air will take it. And there are almost no limits as to where dust can travel.

Your relationships are like containers for almost anything you can put inside of them. When you break them down into their elements, your relationships will take you places you never imagined.  You may not leave home, but your spirit will soar.

Dust is silent, weightless and floats. It’s so tiny that it takes a PhD to understand how much it weights.  Yet when you add up all of the dust, it could crush you and it would cover the world.

Relationships can also crush you. Like when you hurt someone you love and they struggle to forgive you or when you are so angry at someone that you feel like you are going to explode. The crushing relationship is one where the dust may have taken over. 10 years of dust can become like a thick and heavy blanket, choking you.

You need to breathe. In relationships, we breathe by renewing our love, by forgiving, by initiating change that is long overdue, and by learning to accept other people for who they are.

You can’t get away from the dust, it’s inside of you. But you can make peace with it.

• The dust is always moving, looking to find a spot to rest. You won’t find peace in a relationship until you find peace with yourself. Peace is often found through taking a meaningful breath. This may mean meditation, deep breathing, reflection, journaling, prayer, or appreciating (nature, your garden, other people, or beauty).
• Dust is swept away but ends up travelling in invisible clouds. Life may move you around and send you in directions you may not understand. Still, there is beauty in knowing that you will come to rest.
• The dust settles. Remind yourself that however you do it, you need to be like dust and find a way to settle. You don’t have to stay in the same place forever, but for now, you need to settle down.
• Dust is made of everyday things. Dust is really just the tiny bits of life. Don’t get down when your life is down, know this experience is just one tiny bit of life. You have an entire life to live. Let your dust be a testament that your life is made of stone, and gold, and flesh, and wood, and other things that show your strength.
• Dust contains yesterday’s good intentions. Dust is the leftovers from another day. But they are so tiny that you and I cannot worry about them. Remember that worries are little bits of yesterday.

If you like this piece, you will also like Do You Know the Four Keys to Relationship Resilience? And Do You Understand the Distant Man?

I write articles about wellness, leadership, parenting and personal growth. My hope is to deliver the best content I can to inspire, to inform and to entertain.

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Keep it Real

Photo by Joseph Choi