I don't know about you, but I seem to have this idea about how my life is "supposed to turn out." And then when things don't look exactly the way I think they should, I start to stress about it and try to control the situation. When I look around at nature, the trees don't seem stressed out about when their leaves will appear again after the winter. The birds don't freak out about when it's time to make their nests, and the lizards all seem to have a perfect sense of when it would be the right time to come out again into the world.
How can I be so detached from my own nature that I feel such a need to be "hands on?" Aren't I part of the same world as the birds and the trees? Wouldn't whatever universal laws that have everything else in the world functioning so systematically also apply to me? And yet it's so difficult to trust the process of life as it unfolds.
For me, the hardest part is finding the balance between acceptance and action. While I find it helpful to start my day with some time for meditation and reflection, I realize that if I am going to accomplish the goals I have set for myself, I also need to take some action. I think the moments of introspection are important because they allow me to see my life in a broader context. The activities then take on greater meaning because I feel more conscious and aware of WHY I am doing them.
And maybe that broader perspective is the key to feeling peaceful in life. We are taught in this culture especially that there should be no painful moments, no sadness, no frustration. But perhaps those are life's signals to us that we have strayed from our true nature and that we need to refocus ourselves, to take a deeper look at what we're doing and why we're doing it. Maybe the broken road is the one we were meant to walk down, and the lessons we learn along the way are the ones we really needed to experience to have a fuller sense of who we are and why we're here...
In song,
Todd
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2 comments:
In a fairly trivial but telling way, we dig in and reinvent things with food. If you can't eat a certain kind of food or the area in which you live does not grow it, then you take what you have and make something palatable out of it. Otherwise, there would be no matzah balls. Plain matzah is not a great bread, but if that's what you have to eat for a week and you can't have things you prefer, then it becomes a jumping off point for creation of new or better things.
On more weighty matters, for example, someone who is widowed might set aside her previous conception of family, and take in boarders or associate with like-minded people in political causes or volunteer work, instead of becoming dispirited permanently. Other derailments from an expected or hoped-for path, such as disfigurement or financial ruin, are also difficult to compensate for, but as someone once said, it all depends on how you look at things. Or reinvent them. People who see things as challenges rather than cruel fate often reframe their reality. Some might say it's delusional; in other situations, it's that deep breath that makes it possible to continue or to even transcend to greater levels or accomplishments. Some of us create humor or art.
Given lemons, what do we make? We can make lemonade-- or even margaritas. Come to think of it, lemons can be used for lemon sorbet, a palate cleanser. We need it to get the taste of defeat or disappointment out of our mouths.
Music, including yours, can help the rest of us reset. It's an emotional palate cleanser.
But I am pretty much a person filled with blessings.
:^)
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