The Gift of Destruction

For whatever reason, Asheville, NC, is one of a handful of cities that I’ve felt an intuitive calling to visit and potentially live in. My original plan when I moved to Charlotte in 2016 was to stay there for a couple of years and then move to Asheville to settle down for a bit. But for whatever reason, my actual move to Asheville never materialized. Still, it continues to hold a special place in my heart, and it’s still on my short list of cities to have a home in.

So it really blew my mind and made me stop and think when I got the news yesterday that Asheville was pretty much underwater due to Hurricane Helene. It made me wonder: what if I’d actually moved there? What if I’d bought a house there, started to build a life, and then one day, without very much warning at all, a hurricane came through and washed the life I’d built away?

On one hand, this thought exercise made me feel grateful that I hadn’t moved to Asheville, so I don’t personally have to deal with this destruction. But then I thought: who’s to say that Pittsburgh won’t be next? I mean, it’s a city that sits at the junction of three rivers in a valley—if a hurricane ever made it this far inland, I don’t think it’d take long for this whole place to be underwater. God forbid, but who’s to say where you live won’t be next? It never seems like what happens to others can happen to us until it happens to us, and only then do we recognize that no one is truly exempt from disaster, and safety is never as guaranteed as we’d like it to be.

My own family is still without power from this storm, and they’re in Upstate South Carolina, so I can only imagine how long it’s going to take the people of Asheville to get back to some sense of normality. My heart is with them and with you if you’ve been affected by this storm, too.

Loss is a part of life—and though it is wise to mitigate extreme danger as much as possible, there is an aspect of life that is always dangerous, always vulnerable, and that is actually what makes life so precious. Destruction is painful, and none of us really wants it when it comes—especially unannounced. But the beautiful part about destruction is that we can rebuild, and what is rebuilt is, more often than not, much stronger than what was there before.

Sometimes we build things unconsciously and then get so used to living within those structures that we continue to do so out of convenience, even when we’ve grown and can now recognize how poorly built they might be. In those cases, I feel like the Universe sends us a 'natural disaster' to destroy things that are no longer serving us when we lack the will to do it ourselves. I don’t know too much detail about the inner workings of Asheville as a community, but from what I have heard, it sounds like it could have used a reset.

So, if you’re going through your own personal 'natural disaster' right now, maybe consider that the reason why is because the Universe felt like you deserved a reset. And after you grieve what you’ve lost, pick up the pieces and use them to build the life you’ve always wanted.

With love,

Micheal Sinclair 💜