Creative Destruction

Driving in the car the other day, out of the blue, my 7-year-old son said to me, "So, basically, life is like a long dream and when you die, you wake up."

"What made you say that, honey?" I asked him

"I've just been thinking about it," he replied, "I don't think people go to a great place when they die. That's just stupid."

"Well," I said, "everyone has different beliefs about what happens when you die. And it's not stupid for people to believe it. They're actually just trying to find a way to cope with something that is scary and sad for them. That's not stupid, that's smart. They're giving themselves comfort."

"What's so scary and sad about dying?" Ari asked. "You just get a new life."

Death and destruction are an integral part of the life cycle. Seems obvious, yet we spend so much time trying to avoid it. What we eat, how we live...we run from death, some people more than others. I have always been afraid and disdainful of destruction. I do everything in my power to nurture, to preserve. I'm anti-war, I'm a vegetarian...I never really appreciated the element of destruction. I never wanted to acknowledge the destructive power in myself.

When my son was about 4 years old, he was playing with his wooden train set . He placed train pieces opposite from each other and said something about one train killing or destroying the other one. My initial reaction was discomfort. I wanted to chastise him for enjoying the pretend act of destruction. But I caught myself because I realized that it was a normal thing for a child, particularly a boy, to want to express. I didn't want to make him feel bad about the completely natural aspect to his being.

Creation and destruction are parts of us, whether we want to acknowledge both in ourselves or not. It is only in destroying something that we make room for the new. If we look at the world around us, even as something is being created, another is being destroyed and vice versa.
It is the cycle of life...as the leaves die and fall off the trees, they are creating the fertile ground for new seedlings to thrive. Plants that we think of as weeds have all sorts of healing properties, yet they choke out the "desirable" plants, ones that are prettier to look at. We want to always see beauty and we don't always see the beauty in things that are destructive.

It isn't that destruction is bad... it's that when destruction and creation are out of balance there is a problem and the way in which destruction manifests or the way in which people choose to express their destructive energy is the part that can be ugly. Killing another person, destroying someone or something (literally or figuratively) for destruction's sake or doing so without balance or consciousness serves no purpose. But accepting the natural process of destruction as part of our world and part of ourselves can bring us one step closer to integrating the creative and destructive elements in both.

That is what I am after, what I am seeking...to integrate, to blend both of these extremes into one harmonious energy, a united being. In order to do that, I have embraced the destructive power in myself. The only way I can do that is to know that I am creating in the process of destroying and to be clear on what that is. Getting a "new life" as Ari would say or maybe just a new me. It's not always easy to actualize, especially being human and having so many attachments and feelings about change and others' reactions to our changing.

I think we do ourselves a disservice by running from death, from the darkness, from all that is "bad". I believe balance only can come by accepting these things as part of life, as part of us. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is life. This is us. Maybe it doesn't have to be...maybe there is a way for them to be truly one force, creation and destruction living not at two ends of a spectrum but within each other. But if we only choose one of these, whichever one that is, there will always be the other extreme. We can't run from it, we can't ignore it or detach from it. It will find us...as an individual, as a society, as a planet.