Lightning strikes and leaves residual traces of purple and green, like tie-dye stains branded on your frontal cortex.
The rumbling thunder marches like a thousand percussionists, rattling the tectonic plates of your mind.
Crack-c-c-c-k-k-k-k!
Trees, powerful and ancient, are uprooted like toothpicks pulled from a cordon bleu dinner. The soil and stones cling to their hosts as powerful roots fail in their feeble attempt to save the body.
The once solid crust of the earth ripples like water to the sea, where the earthen wave transcribes itself seamlessly to the deep oceanic expanse and continues its journey to the other side - wherever that may be.
I imagine this, as a representation of the way a life-changing event or a moment of clarity finds its passage to a person's spirit.
Sometimes, such a grand moment can occur, seemingly without any potent external stimuli.
Much like an earthquake, the pressure of collaborated events builds until - 'bang!'
The pressure is released and a chain reaction begins like racehorses after the gun.
Other times it is like lightning: An unexpected and external fury that burns with deeply scarring vigor - forever changing you.
At times like this, you have to let go of what you once knew. Your reality will never be the same - there's no changing that.
The landscape of your life will forever be different - and that might seem like too much to take...
With change comes sorrow and grief. It comes because 'what was' must give way to 'what is' just as 'what is' will give way to 'what is to come.'
When things change, we sometimes feel a sense of loss for 'what was' but that isn't a reason to stop living. It isn't a reason to give up.
It is a reason to survive...
It is a reason to keep on pressing on - because the things you loved so dearly before - would never have happened without the same forces of change that took them away.
The same change that brought into being whatever you lost - will always give you something new...
Something worth fighting for.