My reality.
Not everything works out for me. That’s just not real life. I do have crazy awesome things happen in my life, but I also learn every single day how to live better with what I have. I read books with topics on self awareness, personality, connection, living in the present, and loving on purpose. I also have people in my life that are constantly keeping up with my feelings and telling me how I could be better. It’s more so how I choose to live than how my life is. Even with all the good; I have really bad days, I go through depression all too often, I get hurt, I get let down, I get pushed away, and along with experiencing close deaths and close rejection, I have needs and unfulfilled desires. Why wouldn’t I be honest about that? I have nothing to hide but my most personal encounters, and those are not hidden because of regret, but stored in my mind and journals as encounters of love and loss that are too precious to be shared until the moment calls for it.
My pains are no less than anybody else’s, because they’re mine and they’re what I’m connected with. You wouldn’t understand my pain, and I wouldn’t understand yours, but we both understand the word all too well. Pain is pain, just as hurt is hurt, just as rejection is rejection, and we can all learn from how each other processes it all, even though the situations are different. (A reason I don’t post about the specific situation I’m going through, but my feelings, thoughts, and beliefs on how to deal with the pain or hurt of it.)
I choose the life I want to see myself live. That’s where I keep my focus, that’s where my perspective stems from and that’s what I hold on to in dire moments when I am falling apart. I oftentimes talk to my reflection in the mirror just to convince myself back into a better reality or I’ll even stare into my eyes until I come to a realization that I’m better than how I’m feeling in that moment. Honestly, these things are so real for me. Sometimes dealing with falling apart looks like allowing what some might see as insanity for a moment to shed light on your inmost thoughts that you can’t reach normally. In these times I think back through my past and find what held me together, then relive it until I believe it. If I can notice the patterns in my life, I can more easily convince myself that I’m okay now. The things I tell myself today with words and thoughts is what’s going to set up how I will be thinking in the days to come.
I want to learn about anything and everything, so when people come and tell me about an opinion or passion that they have, I soak it up. If I notice they have something in their life and personality that I want; I ask, listen, and become a sponge for their words. But as I continue to figure out what my beliefs are and how powerful of a person I am, I realize that I often don’t question what these people say to me. In a conversation recently with one of the people I highly look up to about their beliefs, I found myself so naturally questioning him and returning my opinion on the subject. Only then did I realize that I had reached a level with him that I thought would take me years of knowledge. He is a person who’s beliefs are brilliant, but I found out in that moment that mine are just as powerful and valid. We can both learn from how the other thinks and their outcomes.
It’s not that everything works out for me… It doesn’t. Honestly, many days I think I have the worst luck, but that’s because all I know is what I experience, and I choose to keep learning from every experience I find myself in. Even though that doesn’t stop the tears when I want something and things go wrong, it does help me to make more sense of real life and understand that things don’t happen how we expect and we just gotta roll with it. Something else is sure to happen that will change our history. We can’t keep sitting in our disappointment because what we have in front of us is the destiny we are waiting for.
Our destiny is what we are living in right now. We are making and changing history with every decision, every hurt, every moment, and every outcome.
Makari Asriel
The force of life
There’s a sweet romanticism that takes place in life by choosing to be free in loving, living, and giving yourself permission to have joy in abundance. You may not believe in it, but there’s an essence of what “life” is that I like to describe as a force that is constantly pushing and pulling for things to either work out or be brought apart. I am a firm believer in everything happening for a reason, the good and bad, accomplishments and mistakes, even the happenstance of slipping down the stairs or crashing your car. Every one moment leads you to your next, and so on. Coincidence is a life force played out.
Thing’s happen in our lives everyday that are the cause of other people’s life events happening. It is not about us, it’s about the success of humankind. The more you can allow yourself to be one with the world and with life, the easier and more connected you will be to your own self and to other people.
True connection and intimacy is something we all search for and all believe we find in various places and people. The problem with this is that a lot of people look for intimacy in relationship with people when the connection they so desire is with life itself. This force is telling them that they are disconnected, and they search their whole lives to feel connected and never end up satisfied with the results. Sex is designed as one of the greatest connections in intimacy, so people conclude that this is the ultimate encounter for connection. Those feelings last for a bit, but as soon as the desire for connection returns, people come back to sex again and again to have that “fix.” As soon as the connection with that person starts to lessen, people create thoughts that it’s the partner’s fault or maybe even their own so they move on to another, and the cycle of searching for intimacy in relationships continues.
When I talk about romanticism with life, my reasoning for that word is that there is a love that transpires in this force of life that works to intertwine itself within your day to day being. It’s a connection. It’s an intimacy. Life WANTS you to succeed in what you do and become the greatest possible at it. The terrible parts of your life often times lead to the greatness and success in other people lives. This sweet connection with our life force allows us to understand better that our situations are not our own but a collection of what takes place in life. We are what we look at in other people to be the greatest. When we are seeing other people’s success and wishing that were ours, they are seeing ours the same way.
We believe what we think. We become what we believe. We become what we behold. Our lives are too precious and beautiful to waste our time with fears of failure.
Failure is an idea, not often a reality. Your “failure” is still a success, but your thought process keeps a void present in your life that needs to be filled with intimacy to “overcome” or “fill” these feelings that you’re not good enough. We are constantly feeling either a love or hate from the things we encounter in life, and depending on how connected we are to our thought process and knowing what our personal intake of the world is, our feelings are going to be different. We have to make sure that what we think and believe about life is how we actually want to see it.
Our thoughts change our perception. Our perception changes our connection. Our connection changes history. Keep pressing into a better reality, a better thought process, and a better connection. This “life force” is our key to thriving.
As always with love, Makarios Asriel
Just a bit of me; say yes!
So I realize that a lot of you don’t know what I do with my life. In fact, I don’t even know what I do with my life. I just say yes. When opportunities to travel come up, I say yes. When I feel a prompting to do something, I say yes. When a situation is uncomfortable, I still say yes. Though I may have some crazy stories about some of the things I’ve said yes to, I do not regret a moment of it. What I do changes my life and changes the lives of the people I come in contact with.
Just last week I was part of an experience that impacted who I am. I have spent the last month in Santa Barbara, California at an Artist Boot Camp. Let me tell you, it really was a boot camp. There were 3 different focuses at this school (acting, music, & film production) and I was in the acting portion of it. I spent over 5 hours a day in acting class and several more hours doing homework for it. When I wasn’t doing that, I was in sessions with incredible speakers who are changing the world through the arts. It was such a change from “normal life,” being stuck on a mountain with barely any cell service, internet, down time, or sleep, but it was absolutely necessary for who I want to become and what I am working towards.
In my last class with my acting group, we all did a connection exercise that will stick with us forever. It started by pressing hands together in a circle (20 or so of us, with the rest of the camp sitting around the edge of our little class room watching us), and making eye contact with each person in our group. From there we were to move as a group and create a company of actors who breathe and work as one. We did this. In a way that left every person in that room with tears running down their faces. I can’t explain it or do it justice. Without knowing what we were doing, we worked as one, connected with each other, and our final move as a group was holding hands, taking a bow, and clapping for each other. The moment we did this, the music stopped, not a dry eye was in the place, and we ran together for a final group hug, knowing that what just happened was an experience that would forever change us. All because each one of us looked at each other and said yes to the moment.
Even though I haven’t slept in a month, and today is my first day home, saying yes to what I knew was right was the best decision I could have ever made. The people I have done life with this summer from all over the country, the friends I’ve made, the places I’ve been, and what I’ve learned about myself, has impacted my life in ways that will never stop increasing.
I am blessed, blessed, blessed. And I am so incredibly thankful for each person that has been a part a it, and helped me through it. I will never be the same.
I believe in saying no, and I am in the process of writing a post on that too, but right now it’s about saying yes to you, yes to your heart, and yes to others. Go for it, be you, be inspired. There is always a way. Know that, believe that, live that.
If you know you, trust your yes.
Love always, Makari Asriel
My acting track 9’14’15
Makari Asriel 