What Just Happened?

I find this to be a critical question.  Often, in the tumult of life, I’m so busy being knocked around by events and emotions and reactions that I’m missing the actual action.  I’m not talking about a broad outline of events.  I mean discovering what’s really going on.  

What (or who) was pushing which button?  
What was going on inside of me?  
What was really happening all around me?

Answering those questions requires pausing.  It necessitates stepping out of the current of life long enough to examine things without having them wash over me.  Stepping into that space has the power to get me somewhere helpful. 

But, I don’t always start there.  Crisis often throws me deep in the clutches of a far less helpful question.  When uncertainty is in the driver’s seat, all I want to know is “What’s going to happen next?” 

And that is a deeply unhelpful question.  It lets fear have freer access to all of the corners of my soul.  It is the type of unknowable question that invites shrinking and armoring up.

“What just happened?”, on the other hand, allows for expansion.  It creates space to reflect with my soft underbelly exposed.  It allows for the vulnerability necessary to forge an constructive path forward.