Which makes life impossible to grasp
The Tao is not about grasping, but allowing, like water.
-Wayne Dyer
No matter how hard we try, controlling life will elude us.
We can't even control how we change, we go through these events, learn things as we go, or begin to understand something in life and it changes us. There's no going back. It changes our values and our interactions, and it's scary as hell, because you are no longer known, you are no longer the old you. People you know, sometimes intimately, are no longer comfortable with you because you are different. At least for a period of time.
We come out the other side and our life has changed completely. We are different, and we attract different things to ourselves. Different people will come into our lives, different opportunities, different experiences. And it's like a total loss of control, like we have no say, we just have to embrace the change. I've tried to fight it in the past, it didn't work, I felt like I was fighting life itself.
A few years ago I was going about my business, then one day I tried pscilocybin mushrooms with a friend one day and it changed me overnight. Changed both of us... My values shifted, my purview shifted, and it literally altered every relationship I had. My habits changed, my interests changed, and my goals changed. The whole experience sent me in a tailspin, one that I had to embrace because I couldn't forget what I experienced. I lost people in my life who had been very close to me.
I fought this change in circumstance as long as I could, which ended up being way to long. I made a ton of mistakes because I was so sure I could change things back, that I could basically go back in time as an improved version of the old me. And at the end of it, I realized I was way off. That the circumstances had actually changed to support me and help me keep growing. I thought to myself "why did I fight so hard? Why didn't I just listen to the signs? Why did I fuck this up so bad?"
That fuck up was the biggest learning experience I've ever had, the one that showed me that life is always changing, that we can't go backwards, only forward, always forward. And always forgive, yourself too.
Flowing From the Past
I went to my 10 year reunion a few years ago, and people looked at me like I was a different person.
In high school I wasn't happy about who I was, so I started down the self improvement path. Most of my close friends have never commented on it because they were always around me while I changed. Ten years of making changes will change you haha, I didn't even realize how different I was!
I looked around and noticed how much everyone else had changed too. People had kids, were married, some didn't make it because they were off living new lives, and some actually stayed pretty much the same.
Sometimes these changes take time, sometimes we change ourselves over years, and sometimes we change in the blink of an eye, in a single sentence, in one visit to the art museum, in a single day to ourselves in nature, in one clear seeing of where we are and what we have allowed our life to become.
Sometimes we delay the change putting it off until it's unbearable. Like staying in a job until you literally can't anymore, you get fired or fed up. Like staying in the same town until you realize you're stagnating. Like never changing your habits.
My point with these two stories is that change happens, whether we want it to or not, and whether we notice or acknowledge it or not. The sooner we embrace change, the sooner we can find our groove. Life is a flow we should learn to swim in. If we keep swimming against it, fighting the current, we subject ourselves to more friction in our lives.
Stop fighting the current...
Much Love,