A couple of days after Christmas, I slipped on a patch of ice near my home and hit the back of my head on the asphalt pavement. Hard.

Everything stopped in my little world, for a few days.

Fortunately, a dear friend was visiting for the holidays. In between storms she got me to the ER where tests showed my head was basically okay. But I did have a mild concussion and needed to stay quiet and mostly rest for a few days, with very little external stimulus.

As I laid there in the darkness, allowing myself to settle into a space of healing, I also got to sit with thoughts and feelings that were coming up. I was already having some anticipatory anxiety about what the hospital bill might add up to, and cursing that piece of pavement that so rudely attacked me. Why did this have to happen?

Then somewhere in the depths of my consciousness I remembered an old mantra:

Everything happens for us, not to us.

I don’t mean this in a spiritual bypass kind of way. There are some things that absolutely should not happen, that no one deserves to go through. We need to do everything in our power to end them – racism, domestic violence, sexual assault and abuse, poverty, to name a few.

But this saying reminds me that I don’t need to cast myself as a helpless victim to what life has in store for me. Whatever happens can become a part of my journey, if I allow it to, and can bring me deeper into my humanity.

This, to me, is what it really means to be walking a path of spirituality.

I don’t care if you light incense every morning and sit on a meditation cushion.

I don’t care if you call yourself a Buddhist or a Christian or a Jew or a Hindu.

I don’t care if you describe yourself as ‘spiritual but not religious.’

These are all the trappings of spirituality. They aren’t the essence of it.

What I do care about is how you make meaning from the darkest happenings of your life. How you mine your experiences for some kind of gold that will serve you and all beings.

I care about how you choose to make your journey through life, and what that journey is for you. (What a great question that is! I’m going to start asking that when I meet someone new instead of that terrible old query, “So what do you do?”)

For sure, a contemplative or spiritual practice of some kind can support that meaning making process. But you have to intend it in the first place. You have to open yourself up to the ‘full catastrophe’ of this life, knowing it’s messy and often doesn’t make any sense and it’s not fair.

Last week, I ran into a friend who shared her own experience with a head injury, more serious than mine. She told me that for a period of time she was not at all able to focus on her work, which involved writing and editing. During that period of time, she had to really ask herself who she was if she wasn’t a writer or an editor. It was a deeply unsettling question and time for her.

My fall on the pavement was a relatively minor event. I count myself blessed that the injury wasn’t more serious and that I’ve recovered quickly. In my case, the fall was a wake-up call to remember how precious life is, and how it can change in a heartbeat.

Every change, whether it’s welcomed or not, is an invitation to re-imagine ourselves, who we are, and how we walk through this world.

Each of us encounters so much on this journey through life: financial struggles, emotional abuse, physical disability, profound loss and grief….

When those things happen, how do you touch into your heart to find the truth of your life?

How do you find the courage to let go of what you thought life should be, and be fully present to what it actually is?

How do you grow with the experience, into a larger version of yourself?

Who do you intend to be on this day?

How will love inform your journey, or not?

Truly, I don’t have answers to these questions. But they are some of the most important questions of our life. I’d love to hear from you and your reflections on this in the comments below.

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