There are moments when life feels reckless—violent even.

Not in the physical sense, but mentally. Spiritually. Emotionally.

Things happen that make no sense. Things happen that feel implausible. Things happen that have you questioning reality and fairness and faith.

You wonder “Why?”

Why me? Why this? Why now?

You wonder what you did to cause this. Why it feels like the universe is plotting against you. Why you just can’t seem to get it right, no matter what you choose.

You wonder if you’ll ever find the answers you’ve been looking for. If there even is an answer…or just an endless stream of questions.

You wonder when you’ll ever step out of the eye of the storm.

There’s a quote from author Haruki Murakami that I often see posted online. A quote that I have posted on Elephant multiple times over the years.

The quote itself feels positive, motivating—like a brief glimpse of hope when we’re finally coming out of our darkest point.

But I’d never read the full quote. The two paragraphs before it that set up that moment of hope. And these days, those two paragraphs are what speak to me most.

Here’s the full quote, for anyone who’s in the middle of a storm:

“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.

And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You’ll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.

And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”

We love the hero’s journey, the idea that we’re capable of surviving anything that life throws our way. But when we’re in the middle of chaos and pain and confusion and overwhelm—when we haven’t made it out the other side, when we aren’t even sure if the other side exists—sometimes we need a reminder that the storm is the journey.

That we have to feel the cut of the blade and see the blood fall (metaphorically, of course), that we have to feel all the terrible before we can feel the hope.

That in order to be a survivor, we have to have survived something.

~