Saturday, January 16, 2016

Dancing with Dominoes


Life often is about cumulative events and chain reactions. The cause and effect that is the ebb and flow of all existence. It is natural and part of life for all living things.

However, for survivors, there is a unique Domino Effect in which it is all too easy for the pieces to fall with a devastating chain reaction which can wreck havoc like an emotional avalanche with debilitating physical effect. For when we are at our weakest and most vulnerable, we exist very tentatively, holding on by the merest of threads. This leaves us with a loss of ability to cope appropriately when the thread even threatens to unravel.


When we survive with pain, even a subtle change in our pain level can knock us down without the reserve strength to get up again. When we struggle with sobriety, even one additional trigger can blindside hurling us completely off the wagon. When we struggle to handle crisis, even a single added stress can strip us of the power to hold on. When we face illness, even the smallest setback can throw us utterly offtrack.

One domino slams into the next compiling on top of each other. The momentum can be relentless and beyond our control. The dominoes falling too quickly to rebound from burying us beneath an ever increasing weight.

It is hard to focus on one domino when all of them start to fall. 

But, it is important to remember the core physics of a chain reaction, for it only takes a single domino, being even slightly out of line, to stop the domino effect in its entirety. 

Do not stare into the vortex of your swirling avalanche paralyzed by the weight of the effect. Do not fight the cumulative reaction in its full strength.

Inhale. Focus on just one or even the tiniest corner of one.

We need to attempt to alter, cease, or change, if only the path of a single domino, to the smallest degree to stop the reaction of falling.

We may not always believe it, but we are the change which alters the outcome. 

Let go of the idea of perfection or total control, they are unrealistic and un-achievable. Remove the ideal of a future optimal result when the focus needs to embrace the chance of changing the overwhelming present.

Take it one domino at a time. 

We can clean up the mess later. We can sort through them and try to stand them up again, one at a time, when we have refortified. 

You have the power to affect the effect today and can face rebuilding anew tomorrow.

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