The world is so unpredictable. Things happen suddenly, unexpectedly. We want to feel we are in control of our own existence. In some ways we are, in some ways we're not. We are ruled by the forces of chance and coincidence.
~The Daodejing
I have never been one to be passive, to let things happen instead of making them happen, to let go of control of things.
But here’s what I’ve been learning:
This control we think we have over our lives and our destinies … it’s an illusion. As the guy who had his life turned upside down by a heart break, car accident and totaled his car; a woman who lost her father to death and had to drop everything, the family who lost their home to a hurricane, the entrepreneur that was doing well until the economy collapsed and no one was spending, the hard-working employee who was laid off when the economy tanked, the cyclist who was hit by a car, the car that skid because someone ran onto the road who had been obscured, the mom whose son has autism despite her doing everything right during pregnancy … it happens every day, where we think we’re in control but we’re really not. Do we control all the people around us who affect our lives so intimately? Do we control the overwhelming power of nature? There’s so much out of our control that what we think is control is really an illusion.
To control your cow, give it a bigger pasture. This is a great quote from Zen Master Suzuki Roshi, talking about controlling your mind. I see the cow and her pasture as a form of allowing things to happen — instead of tightly controlling something, you’re opening up, giving it more room, a bigger pasture. The cow will be happier, will roam around, will do as she pleases, and yet your needs will also be met. The same is true of anything else — stepping back and allowing things to happen means things will take care of themselves, and your needs will also be met. And you’ve done no work.
You have less stress, less to worry about. Imagine allowing things to happen naturally, and things work out, and all you did was smile and watch. You don’t have to worry about shaping things, about controlling something that doesn’t want to be controlled. You don’t have to push, and fix leaks, and put out fires. You just let things work on their own. They happen.
Things will surprise you. Let’s say you’re allowing something to happen. You might want it to go a certain way, to a certain outcome. That’s your goal. But what if you let go of this idea? What if you say, “I don’t know what will happen.” (Btw, you really don’t.) What if you say, “Let’s see what happens.” Then things will happen, but not the way you planned. The outcome might be completely different than what you’d hoped for. But it can still be great, just different. It might even be wonderful, and surprising. Surprises are good, if we accept that things always change and that change is good.
You learn how things work. Instead of trying to make things work the way you want them to work, just watch them work. You’ll learn much more about human nature, about the nature of the world, as you see things work without you controlling it. It might change you.
Remember, it is not what happens to us that determines our reality it is how we interpret it. We have control over our perceptions, decisions and actions not so much outer events. What we may initially see as a challenge, a setback, or a pain, or terrible can later turn out to be a turning point in our lives. Even in that moment opportunity emerges for those that look.
But why have the wisdom of the ages with the aging process when we can look at our challenge with new eyes and discover the other side of the perceptual equation and discover a meaning at first missed without the aging process. I have taken thousands of students through their crises and helped them see the equal and opposite blessings.
If you never look and you just keep running the story of being a victim of outer circumstances you delay the discovery of the opportunity to be a master. Every event has two sides.
Wisdom is discovering the whole and objective not the part and subjective only. Our resilience and adaptability is remarkable once we ask the wise questions and extract our a deeper meaning out of our apparent chaos. So too in turn our terrific experiences too have another side and the wise individual does not become carried away by outer appearances and recenters themselves with poise.
Just because we have not looked for and seen the two sides of the equation does not mean they are not synchronously there for our learning and growth.
-AG