“You have been offered ‘the gift of crisis’. As Kathleen Norris reminds us, the Greek root of the word crisis is ‘to sift’, as in, to shake out the excesses and leave only what’s important. That’s what crises do. They shake things up until we are forced to hold on to only what matters most. The rest falls away.” ~ Glennon Doyle Melton
I know it’s the new year, and we’re all trying to be hopeful and optimistic about the year ahead, but crises don’t care about the calendar. If you haven’t already had one, you know someone who has, and there’s always a new war or natural disaster to deal with somewhere. Crises come to us all, sometimes individually, sometimes collectively. Rarely, if ever, are they welcomed or invited.
We all respond to crises — large and small — in different ways. Some absorb and internalize the pain, the grief, the fear. They hold it, identify with it, and let it define them for the future. You know those people who are still bitterly ranting about some perceived injustice or wrong they suffered even though it’s been years? They’ve let that crisis seep into their souls and become part of them. You can’t have a normal conversation with them without it reverting back to X-Y-Z that so-and-so did back in the day. (That’s the clue that we haven’t processed something… when we can’t stop going back to it again and again.)
And then there are the people who come through a crisis without being infected by it. Instead, they learn from it, adapt to it, become better for it in the long run. Somehow they’re able to use the crisis as a tool for growth and self-development. Instead of resisting or running away, or becoming toxified by the crisis thrust upon them, they lean into it and come out on the other side stronger, more compassionate, kinder, wiser. They become resilient. That’s the “gift of crisis.” I have the utmost respect for those individuals; they are gold in a sea of brass.
Crises will come. It’s pointless to worry about them or fear them. Then you just experience the crisis on repeat (why do we do that to ourselves?). Better, perhaps, to see the crisis as that gift that can, if we let it, make us better.