Trusting and letting go and being assured that you will be ok in the end is a tough thing to do – especially when it comes to major decisions in your life. For people who like to have things planned, organized and controlled, this is a particularly big one.
My life has been in a state of flux the last few months regarding the next stage of my life. Lots of decisions to be made, and not enough information to make the decisions; so many things to do and not enough hours in the day to do them, while the clock ticks inexorably to the deadline in a few days…
For a while, I was stressed out about not having enough information to make decisions I needed to. This stress began to manifest itself psychosomatically, which is not a cool thing. But I went to bed one day resolved to feel better the next morning. I had to do one of my “attitude adjustments”. In the process, it came to me that I had been in this position many times in my life and things always worked out somehow. Besides, what else could I do? There was no point worrying over elements I could not control. I had to center myself, reaching deep inside to the lesson I have learnt many times: things will be ok.
I once heard somewhere that if you can’t solve it, it isn’t a problem – it’s reality. It brings to mind the Serenity Prayer and a quote my friend posted on Facebook: “Sometimes we need to stop planning the future, stop trying to figure out precisly how we feel, stop deciding with our mind what we want our heart to feel. Sometimes we just have to live in the flow“. Living in the flow of life is a wonderful way to live, but takes conscious effort on our part to keep us on track, as I had to learn once again. Not living in the flow of life is like trying to swim against the current, cutting against the grain. But living in the flow of life requires a great deal of trust; a complete faith in the process; an unquestioned belief that things will work out just the way they are meant to be – and however that works out…IS OK. And like I have said in several previous posts, no situation is intrinsically good or bad – it is the interpretation we put on them that make them good or bad for us.
We are conditioned to believe that we need to make things happen in our life and we want instant results. And as a person who believes in being the author of my life, I am constantly creating the story that is my life. But I also do know that sometimes I need to surrender. The secret and the reality, however, is that by surrendering, we do not abdicate authorship of our life; we do not relinquish control. Surrender requires a LOT more strength than trying to control things that we have no control over. Surrender is not a giving up, but a giving in – giving in to the goodness that is ours for the taking. Surrender is a conscious decision to make room for goodness in our life and all we are really doing is stepping out of our own way.
“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.” ― Gilda Radner
