If I said everything is fine as it is right now, you might argue, would you not? If you are going through a hard time right now, you can’t possibly imagine how I can say to consider it fine. It certainly isn’t fine to you. It is not fine with you because it isn’t what you wanted, and you don’t see a reason why it should be fine when it isn’t fine with you. How can it be fine when your heart is breaking, trouble waylays you, and woe abounds?
Beloveds, because the juke box plays a song you don’t want to hear doesn’t mean that the song is not all right. It can only be the song it is.
You continue to have the idea that life has to be a certain way and not another. You continue to be sure life is supposed to play out, not only the way you want, but the way you think it should be, the way that is proper, the way that is fitting. And so you are displeased.
Let’s face it. You are hard to please. When you surmise that there is only one way for life to configure itself, then there are numerous events that will not please you and against which you will strain. When you object to life as it presents itself, you are assuring that life will be hard. Let life be easy by letting it be what it is, and keep going forward.
Life was not meant to be an obstacle to enjoyment. Life was meant to be a vehicle for joy. Who is right, and who is wrong when you enjoy life less than you are meant to, life or you? Suffering is not easy for you. At the same time, I guarantee you that life does not have to be suffering. Nor am I suggesting that you pretend life is rosy when you feel quite differently.
What I am suggesting is that you rise above it. Whether life has reason from your point of view or not, you are along for the ride. Perhaps you feel like a child kidnapped, and that you have no say about where you’re going. You do, however, have great say over what the ride will be like. If you did not carry fear in your heart, you would be fearless, and you would not suffer.
You feel there are repercussions. You fear that one thing follows another. You fear that if a loved one’s body dies, that it will mean you are alone, or it will mean that no one loves you, or that you won’t be able to manage. When you fear illness, you fear all the aspects of the illness and what the future might bring. Make today enjoyable.
I am telling you, beloveds, that if you did not fear so much, then changes in the terrain of life would not seem so momentous to you. You fear there is a codicil that comes along with every event. Something may be bad enough, but then you feel that there are also strings attached, and these strings will be pulled.
What if everything really is all right the way it is now? What then? If it is all right that you lost your job, if it is all right your wife left you, your cat is ill, your car broke down -- if you can know that even when a loved one is at death’s door or has slipped away in the night -- it is still all right, it isn’t wrong, it doesn’t have to be any other way but the way it is, then would you still take life so hard?