How Did I Get Here?

On this spinning speck of sea and sand hurtling through the unknown universe, asking how did I get here? has the surreal and distinct ability to ground me. 

It brings me to present. 

I have taught myself to ask this question after a milestone in which my life undoubtedly changed and even on a Monday with no seeming significance. I carry on with this internal inquiry after a mess-up with my partner or when I uncover a new dream. I introspect regularly because, as I wrote this February: 

There's value in retracing my steps, familiarizing myself with my current environment. It keeps me honest about where I've been, where I'm going. It allows me to refocus and come back to this side of the looking glass for a moment.

When I ask this question, it comes with a catch. Here is often both fragmented and full — this the paradox of almost all that is lovely. Here seems to accept that the gift of being human is the gradient of emotion we can hold, if we want. Here makes space to deeply believe one thing and even its complete opposite at the same time.  

Yes, Here, for me, has been home to sincerity and heartache and forgiveness and, more often than not, change. Here is where I learned to get back up, bruised knees, broken bits, but standing in awe of myself, the sheer fact that we can stand again at all.

Here taught me that trying, experimenting, failing, outgrowing — these are all forms of exposure crucial to my becoming. Exposure doesn’t mean adoption, an old friend soothed me once. It turns out that here doesn’t have to be forever, either.

Asking this question taught me how often I’ve gone to bat for the wrong things. Whenever I find myself back at this particular Here, I lovingly ask myself how long will I fight for something else before fighting for myself? To surrender, I’ve learned, can be a sacred backdoor. 

Here taught me that adaptability churns out opportunity. “Every Plan B is an act of creation,” one of my favorite writers, Rob Bell, said during a class once. Perhaps that is why the art of adaptability is so revered — the animal in us instinctively knows that something as old as time is occurring. 

Here taught me to look for the poetry in surprise. When it comes to poetry, we allow ourselves to be delighted, to get goosebumps, big-eyed at the unexpected. What if we approached Here with that same inclination toward wonder? Surprises (by nature and in my own experience) don’t usually make sense, but neither do so many of my favorite poems. As Krista Tippet wrote in Becoming Wise, “surprise is the only constant.” 

Most importantly, Here never fails to remind me that I can be someone who chooses differently. 

When I dig into it, I suppose I keep asking how did I get here? because I am finally beginning to recognize that the bits of my former selves, all the heres I’ve lived through — they’ve all begun to somehow fit together in a strange way, creating a pattern, or perhaps a kaleidoscope of sorts.

To be Here means to sit in the changing colors, taking in the shimmery. The mirrors, the illusions, the draw of the fascinating things. To understand that there is a reason brokenness is the hallmark of arrival, and to see the beauty in it all the same.

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