I have a friend that is moving to a totally different continent in less than a month. She isn’t just moving to somewhere safely exotic like Italy or Portugal, goodness no, she is booking it all the way to Korea.
And after years of pain and frustration, disconnect with her dreams and passion, and a failed marriage she finally had enough. Maybe it was a quarter-century life crisis, or maybe she woke the heck up to the shell of what she was living and how it didn’t feed her being; I don’t know. What I do know is that she stopped fighting her life.
Once she let go and surrendered to a totally new experience and way of living, she found someone. Her complement. After years of feeling not quite connected to men in a romantic way, she finally found someone who got her…to her core. And, of course, she is picking up and moving for two years.
What are we fighting?
We can spend years fighting our lives and ourselves.
We can struggle to pay the bills, never quite making ends meet; each month a limbo of financial uncertainty. We can hate our bodies and struggle to lose weight, gain muscle, look better like our bodies belong to someone else and we can’t believe we somehow got stuck with it. We can force relationships with people because we love them and want it to work. We can live in quiet desperation, knowing something is just not right, but never figuring out what it is. Job? Spouse? Children? House? So why do I feel so empty.
What are we fighting for?
We are fighting for what we want. When I was a child I spake like a child, thought like a child, and reasoned like a child. I also ‘wanted’ like a child.
I wanted a Lite Brite with all the yearning of my six-year old being. Somehow I knew I would never get one and it saddened me deeply. Well, now I am an adult and I reason like an adult and ’want’ like an adult. yesterday’s Lite Brite is today’s perfect marriage or Tesla Roadster.
What does it mean?
What would it mean to have a new and improved You2.0? To have all you desired made real? How would you live differently from how you live now? Everything would be better, advanced to a more desirable state, of greater excellence than before.
And then what?
We subconsciously think that if we have everything we want, we will be happy. That is no different from thinking that if your partner does everything right, then you will love them fully. You’ll never be angry and you’ll be a better person. That if you do everything right, they will love you more.
Living Conditionally
Living conditionally is a tragedy and an unnecessary one. We know that if you ‘truly’ love someone, your love has nothing to do with whether they live with you or have a job or are perfect. You love someone regardless of the exigencies of their or your circumstances.
Your life is no different.
Don’t withhold loving your life until it is ‘perfect’. You could wait forever. And love has nothing to do with happiness. You can love someone and still be unhappy with their choices. You can love your life and be unhappy with where it is at, desire to do something better, and be more excellent than you were before.
Just don’t withhold yourself, your love, and your approval until the moment when everything is complete and whole and perfect. Could you imagine the way you would feel if your parents had withheld their love from you until you were ‘complete’ and perfect? Can you imagine the pain you would hold in your heart? Is that pain at all similar to the pain you feel regarding your life?
Growing Up
All of the time people trot out the line that ‘the journey is more important than the destination’. It’s truer than we can know.
What is the freaking destination? What is the point that your life is complete and perfect? What is it?? It is all points and no points.
Could you imagine looking at your child and thinking “You’re not done yet, I’ll love you later.” Of course not. You child is perfect…as is, at being a child, at being. Your child is not finished or done or complete and yet you love them still. You can look at your child and see all the potentials they have, all the things they can do, all the possibilities which exist. What a precious, precious time.
So, so what if your life isn’t complete. Who cares if you haven’t reached the destination? Just relax and let it all go. Stop forcing yourself and your life. You can’t make a toddler into a WallStreet financier; it isn’t the time and they don’t have the skills or inclination to do so.
Enjoy your life, as it is. Stop trying to force it into what ‘you’ think it should be. When you let go, raise the white flag, and move in the flow of your life and it’s being – that is moment when you can often receive what you wanted, even if you don’t want it so much anymore.
Ironic?
So is it Alanis-Morissette-ironic that my friend found her complement right before her 2 year out-of-country escapade? No. She found what she had been wanting the moment she let everything go.
10 comments
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April 28, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Leah Elliott Hauge
Thanks for this. All my life, I’ve been one who loves to make plans for the future, where would I live, go to school? What would I do for a living? And as soon as those plans come to fruition, I’m back to planning what’s next. I spend so much of my mental energy in the future, when all that is real is the present. Lately, I’ve been consciously trying to just enjoy where I am, appreciate what I have now instead of being so preoccupied with what’s next. I’m not sure if this is the exact quote, but there’s the line from the John Lennon song: Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. So true! Life will never be perfect. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive for improvement, but it also doesn’t mean we should discount all the joy available in the present, if we’ll only stop worrying and notice it!
April 28, 2008 at 9:49 pm
Guerrillero
Sometimes it’s high time to make a change, to break away from the old habits, people and things. Going away from all these is the way out 9not always). The cure is always in ourselves.
“…Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.” (Shakespeare, Sonnet 66)
April 29, 2008 at 1:34 am
curlywurlygurly
you post resonates because it’s so true…everyone is so busy trying to shoehorn themselves into the right “box.” it makes me crazy and i try to avoid it at all costs.
April 29, 2008 at 1:37 am
marlajayne
Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled begins with reminding the reader of one of Buddha’s noble truths that life is difficult. He then goes on to say that as soon as we realize that and stop whining, life will be better (or something like that). After reading this book, I got interested in Buddhism and read a little about it. I learned that the reason that life is difficult is because of desire (for fame, fortune, love, travel, a great job, a new home, brownies), and consequently, to be happy we just need to relinquish desire. It’s “deeper” than this, but you get the picture.
April 29, 2008 at 2:03 pm
connie
Your posts are always so articulate and clever! I think we are all a “work in progress” If we wait until we think everything is perfect or we have everything we want to be “happy” we are in for a very long wait! Life is good . We have to acknowlege the good things and improve upon the “bad” stuff and enjoy the ride as best we can!
April 29, 2008 at 2:17 pm
persistentillusion
@ leah – I am so excited that you are trying to enjoy where you are. You are so right about appreciating what you have now.
@ guerrillero – I would definitely agree with that, especially if the people or activities involved are toxic.
@ curly – So true! And yet we aren’t actually square…
@ marlajayne – Why, oh why, does that book ring a bell? Anyway, I struggled with Buddhism for a long time because the precept of don’t-want-because-wanting-makes-you-miserable seemed a bit like cutting off a foot that is in pain.
However, after my retreat, I realized that someone who is completely in touch with their soul-selves truly doesn’t want and therefore isn’t in pain. The difference is in thinking that the result of enlightenment (not wanting) is actually the cause of it.
@ connie – Yes! And sometimes ‘enjoying the ride’ means gardening regardless of how good at you are.
April 29, 2008 at 7:43 pm
thedailydish
John said the same thing to me before we left this weekend,
“The journey IS the destination.”
Great minds, babe…..
May 2, 2008 at 5:06 pm
jimsmuse
Ha! I was only going to say that I had been trying to figure out why I started noticing Ashton Kutcher and you’ve explained it perfectly!
Now I feel as thought I ought to have something a little more profound to say after reading the above comments. Oh, well. I will put profundity on my calendar for tomorrow.
Thank you for making me think on a daily basis!
May 2, 2008 at 6:08 pm
marlajayne
I just realized that I posted the above comment in response to something else you had written somewhere. Crazy, huh? About the gender thing, in the South we sometimes speak of strong women being “steel magnolias.” One of my sister-in-law is so well-mannered, giving, lovely, etc. that some people have made the mistake of thinking she’s a meek, weak pushover. This is clearly not the case, something that became clear to me early in our relationship as I saw the dynamics between my brother and her. Oh, she washes the clothes and does most of the cooking, but there have been many occasions when he learned that she was (is) one tough, yet sweet, gal.
May 2, 2008 at 6:46 pm
persistentillusion
SO FUNNY you mentioned this. I came across a blog called “The Gentle Art of Ruling Your Husband” and it seems geered toward the ’steel magnolia’ types. I’m definitely keeping an eye on it. With a name like that, there should be some extremely entertaining posts.