We get wrong-footed because we rely on the unreliable.
What is truly, unerringly reliable? Not much. And you can choose to see that either as cause for despair, or a kind of liberation.
All sorts of outrageous-seeming things have happened and will happen to me during my life. ‘Why me?’, I can rage. ‘Why not you?’ an entirely indifferent Universe might reply. We all feel special to ourselves, but Life couldn’t care less what Ego believes.
You know what else will happen to me though? What has happened? Countless small joys and spectacularly welcome occurrences, that’s what.
And very few of either variety had much to do with me. Life lifes. That’s what it does.
Come though; I’m not entirely powerless, a floppy inert puppet tossed on the storms of Life’s oceans. I’m alive, experienced, I have my wits about me. I can exert influence, if not control.
I may not be able to rely upon much, but I can take good care of my overall well-being – body and mind yes, but also my energy, connections, my environment, my relationships, my sense of peace within myself. Approaching life like that, I’m more likely to relish small joys, and be better placed to navigate the outrageous when it happens, not to mention the small irritations. Life lived that way is no less brutal, but is a great deal more satisfying (and just a little less outrageous seeming, when I stop taking the random happenstance so damn personally).
What’s more, the energy freed up by clinging just a tiny bit less to the unreliable seems to magically redirect itself to curiosity and stubborn gladness for what can be relied upon.
Which is?
What is, now.
What has been.
The flow of life (the Tao).
I dearly want to believe I can rely on my own inner space, carefully attended to by many years of daily meditation; but even that is not entirely reliable. I could suffer a catastrophic brain injury or freak neurological event, and as much as I may be a spiritual being having a human experience, my human brain is the interface through which I experience that experience. Stubborn gladness, then, for my inner space as it is now.
Are we being asked to stop relying upon the unreliable? To surrender? To accept? Certainly these are paths to freedom from our own self-created suffering proposed by Yogic and Buddhist philosophy.
Surrender and acceptance get a bad rap in western culture, but they’re not about waving the white flag flag. They’re about rolling with the punches of reality and acting accordingly. Accepting that this is the situation. I find the addition of the word ‘that’ very helpful. How can I possibly accept this outrageous situation? It’s unacceptable! To accept it would make it ok! And it’s not ok! Ah, but accepting that this is my situation…. Semantics, perhaps, but that ‘that’ seems to create just enough objectivity for me to dust myself down and crack on, rather than spinning my wheels resisting the outrageous. It helps me to take responsibility. Not blame – that’s different. Taking responsibility means that I have a choice over how I approach this, and that what happens next, is – at least partially – up to me. Taking responsibility empowers me. (As the marvellous Mark Manson puts it: if someone dumps a baby on your doorstep, clearly you are not to blame. You are, however, now responsible for what happens to that baby.) Even if the only thing I have control over is my attitude, that has a powerful influence over how things go; how I experience my life.
So this – this is where I find myself. It might be most unwelcome. It might be the very last thing I would have chosen. But I alone get to choose my perspective. I get to stop being wrongfooted at every turn by relying on the unreliable.
And that, my friend, is everything.