{"id":245,"date":"2025-11-06T17:21:49","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T17:21:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vibhashah.com\/?p=245"},"modified":"2025-11-06T17:21:49","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T17:21:49","slug":"struggle-to-stillness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vibhashah.com\/?p=245","title":{"rendered":"Struggle To Stillness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/vibhashah.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ChatGPT-Image-Nov-5-2025-09_18_02-PM-1024x683.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-246\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vibhashah.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ChatGPT-Image-Nov-5-2025-09_18_02-PM-1024x683.png 1024w, https:\/\/vibhashah.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ChatGPT-Image-Nov-5-2025-09_18_02-PM-300x200.png 300w, https:\/\/vibhashah.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ChatGPT-Image-Nov-5-2025-09_18_02-PM-768x512.png 768w, https:\/\/vibhashah.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ChatGPT-Image-Nov-5-2025-09_18_02-PM.png 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>(A reflective journey into the space where joy and pain can sit side by side \u2014 and still feel whole.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Go back, just for a moment, to the times in life when you have felt your heart stretch wide with happiness.<br>Not the casual happy \u2014 but the sacred happy.<br>The kind that fills your chest so deeply, you can feel life pour through you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019ll tell you a few of mine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Holding my kids for the very first time.<br>Hearing they got into the colleges they dreamed of.<br>Realizing they had found their life partners \u2014 and feeling a joy that, somehow, was even bigger than the day I met mine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Those moments didn\u2019t just make me smile \u2014 they made me feel alive. They made everything make sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then\u2026 there are the other moments.<br>The ones the heart doesn\u2019t want, but life gives anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Losing my dad.<br>Watching my mom carry grief, and knowing I couldn\u2019t fix it.<br>Feeling the sting of my own children\u2019s selfishness \u2014 not because they are bad, but because life was reminding me that love doesn\u2019t guarantee understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Those moments also made me feel deeply alive \u2014 but in a way that hurt.<br>A reminder that life is not a straight line of joy, but a rhythm of rise and fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For years I kept asking:<br>How do I stay happy forever?<br>How do I protect myself from the things that break me?<br>How do I control life so it doesn\u2019t hurt so much?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But slowly \u2014 life taught me something else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The goal was never to control anything.<br>The goal was to learn how to stay rooted no matter what comes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And maybe that\u2019s where spirituality quietly begins \u2014 not in escaping emotions, but in learning to hold them without losing ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not in pretending pain doesn\u2019t exist,<br>Not in clinging to joy as if it\u2019s slipping away,<br>But in finding the space in between.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That small, steady space inside where you are not the happy moment, and you are not the sad one \u2014<br>you are simply the one who experiences all of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is a quiet witness within us who never breaks, never reacts, never runs \u2014<br>the part of us that was there when we laughed,<br>and was still there when we cried.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The more we rest in that space, the less life feels like something we must survive \u2014<br>and the more it feels like something we can fully live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not perfect.<br>Not painless.<br>Just deeply real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A gentle call to you<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Close your eyes tonight, and instead of asking:<br>\u201cHow can I stay happy forever?\u201d<br>try asking:<br>\u201cCan I make space for all of life \u2014 without losing myself?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because maybe true peace is not in controlling what happens,<br>but in meeting it all \u2014 with presence, softness, and trust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That is where struggle begins to soften.<br>That is where stillness begins to grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(A reflective journey into the space where joy and pain can sit side by side \u2014 and still feel whole.) Go back, just for a moment, to the times in life when you have felt your heart stretch wide with happiness.Not the casual happy \u2014 but the sacred happy.The kind that fills your chest so &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/vibhashah.com\/?p=245\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Struggle To Stillness<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7,8,5,6,9],"class_list":["post-245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-coping","tag-meaning-of-life","tag-spiritual","tag-stillness","tag-why-am-i-here"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vibhashah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vibhashah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vibhashah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vibhashah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vibhashah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=245"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vibhashah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":247,"href":"https:\/\/vibhashah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions\/247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vibhashah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vibhashah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vibhashah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}