The mess becomes a map once you know how to use it

“I’m a mess” or "it's a mess" is something I feel like I say and a lot of others say, often. 

We toss it around, we call ourselves disastrous and complicated. We are so quick to label situations catastrophic and tricky. 

I recently read a quote in the book “Open Road Summer” which totally has inspired this post. “The mess becomes a map once you know how to use it”. It really struck a chord with me. It was used when describing the sky, and the stars that are around our planet, however I feel like it can and does apply to our lives too. The mess that we seemingly have created in the short time we have been on this earth can guide us to make better, well informed choices in the future. 

There is a lot of talk at the moment about the butterfly effect, and how every, *seemingly small*, decision we make influences and impacts the next one. If we didn’t make bad decisions (/A MESS) we might not be where we are today and if we didn’t make good decisions we also might not be there either. That’s the basics of the butterfly effect, or so I understand. If we hadn’t created some sort of shit storm, we might not have learnt and been able to take from that. If you want to read a proper explanation of the butterfly effect, you can do here. It is actually really fascinating, and depending on how you look at it, can have many interesting purposes in our everyday lives. It can be both positive and negative, depending on your outlook. I like to be more positive. :) The butterfly effect relates to the chaos theory, and it explains that the power is out of your hands - or is it? Can we used those ill-informed choices in a different way?

We all go through trials and tribulations in our lives which bring us to where we are, right here, right now. As you probably know by now, I am a huge believer in fate, and I believe that everything happens for a reason. I wrote a blog post on Fate last year, and it is crazy reading it back now, given what has happened since I wrote that. You can read it here. The post holds a special place in my heart.  It also contains my most favourite blog photos that I have ever taken... anyways. 

I have gone through many a trials and a tribulations in my lifetime, as you've probably gathered by now, if you read this blog... and that's not even the half of it. But every, single, time, something happens, I just try to remind myself, what is this teaching me? How can I learn, grow and develop from this? What is the greater meaning? It allows me to turn those hard times into something more positive, and as the title says, "The mess becomes a map once you know how to use it."

The mess that I have encountered, the mess that you've encountered, they are all just learning curves. Once you recognise this, you no longer see hard times as a road block. You see them as doors to new places. It wasn't meant to be - or maybe it was. The so called "negative" ending to whatever situation, happened to show you something. To show you that you have the power to turn it around, and use the life lessons to make different choices next time.