When you look at life one way, how can you not be happy with all the blessings that are thrown at you?
When you look at life another way, how can you help but be unhappy with the curves that life has thrown at you?
And there is much in between ecstatic and sorrowful. There is disappointing, there is let down, and there is so-so.
If you could soak in the treasure that life on Earth is, you would be elated all the time. You would know that life on Earth is remarkable, an amazing thing, and that you are here populating and receiving all the wonders of it. You would be amazed at all the connections and intersections and seeming coincidences and returns and bounces and delights and surprises and the myriad of twists and turns and turn-a-rounds.
Who on Earth could possibly think up all the stories in life, even in one person’s life? Who could write such stories? Who could keep writing them and another and another? Your life is a serial that goes on and on and has no ending. Like waves in the Ocean, there is another chapter and another chapter and another on into Infinity. Life is more than story, of course, you recognize that. And, yet, you are most interested in the story and how it will come out even for a while. You’ve got to know. You are impelled to come to some kind of understanding or conclusion.
When will the Prince come? When will True Love be declared? When will Life amount to what you want? Why is there loneliness and unfulfillment and heaviness? As you see it, why not always light and loveliness?
Here’s the thing. Even as stories disappoint and certainly aren’t the culmination of your life, you count on them. You would whip the stories into shape if you could. You would wring the last drop out of them. As it is, you think the stories of your life amount to a weather vane that tells what direction the wind is coming from. You consider the stories as an assessment of how you’re doing, as if the stories rank you, yet it is you who ranks yourself.
In fact, you do write the stories. You base your story on what has happened so far. You continue your story from where you left off.
I have besought you to drop the past. If you would drop the past and stop mulling it over, if you would stop drawing conclusions from the past, you would be free to write a whole new storyline, starting today. You would promote different conclusions and different overwhelmings and underwhelmings. As when you breathe in and out, your biology changes. Just as you grow in understanding, your view, your outlook, and your experiences change. This is inevitable.
Now this does not happen in a straight line. Your life doesn’t change evenly. You think you would like it to, yet evenness palls on you. Confess! Despite your protests, you like variety. You like ups and downs. You like to avoid disaster at the same time as you like to have it to avoid. You like contrast. You like different colors. You call some things great, some okay, and some abhorrent, and you would forbid them.
You would like to have the say over life and death, and, in some sense you do. You also like not knowing and to find out as you go along.
Let’s face it, beloveds, you are an explorer. You like to take chances. That is, you like to have chances before you. You don’t really want to know ahead of time. The thing is: You like life. No matter how much you may protest life as it is, you like it. You like life. You love it. Life gives you a chance. It keeps you in suspense.