The Ebbs and Flows of Life

There are days when life feels less like a journey and more like carrying six grocery bags up three flights of stairs because you were too stubborn to make two trips.

Nothing is necessarily wrong. Nothing has completely fallen apart. You are simply tired.

Tired of trying.Tired of waiting.Tired of tending to things that refuse to bloom on your schedule.

We all arrive at this place eventually.

Lately, I have felt a little overwhelmed myself. Granted, I have a few things going on. Some of them are wonderful and exciting, the kind of things I have dreamed about and worked toward for a long time. Others are simply the ordinary responsibilities of being alive—the emails, decisions, details, problems, people, bills, plans, repairs and loose ends that apparently reproduce overnight when no one is looking. And sometimes even good things become heavy when you are carrying too many of them.

Last night I led a meditation about this very subject.

I spoke about the ebb and flow of life.

Ride the wave, I said.

Let the crashing waves stay where they belong, far out at the edges. Move inward, away from all that noise and turbulence. There is a place within you that is quieter than the circumstances surrounding you.

Find it.

Stay there.

Peace is a choice, I said.

And somewhere in the room I felt resistance.

No one said anything. No one even looked up.

But I could almost hear the response.

Really?

A choice?

You don’t know how hard my life is.

You don’t know what I’m carrying.

If I had a choice, don’t you think I would have chosen something different?

Peace, shmeese.

And the funny thing was, part of me wanted to say exactly the same thing.

So I changed course.

“Maybe you don’t want to choose peace today,” I said. “And that’s okay.”

The room became very still.

“You don’t have to put everything down forever. Maybe just put it down for the next hour. You can pick it back up when you leave if you want to. It’s your life. It’s your burden. No one is taking it from you.”

“But perhaps for one hour,” I said, “you don’t have to carry it.”

One hour.

Maybe even one moment.

And as I said it, I realized I was speaking to myself too.

The woman I had felt resisting finally looked up.

She smiled.

Not a big smile. Barely a smile at all.

But it was enough.

Sometimes enough is enough.

Life is going to do what life does.

It will place magnificent gifts in our hands and then, without explanation, ask for some of them back.

It will open doors we thought were permanently locked and close others while our foot is still in the doorway.

It will give us love and worry and beauty and disappointment, sometimes all before lunch.

The question has never really been how to prevent life from changing.

We cannot.

The question is how we remain ourselves while it does.

How do we stay steady while everything around us rises and falls?

That sounds lovely in theory.

We all know about the sunny side of the road.

We know about silver linings and lemons becoming lemonade and every other cheerful metaphor ever printed on a coffee mug.

Sometimes you don’t want the silver lining.

Sometimes you want to crawl under the blankets and announce to the universe:

Fine.

You win.

Uncle.

Wake me when this part is over.

And perhaps sometimes we should.

Rest is not surrender.

A tired soul is not a failed soul.

There are times when the bravest thing we can do is stop fighting long enough to recover our strength.

Because inevitably something happens.

The sun comes through the window differently one morning.

Someone calls at exactly the right time.

A stranger is unexpectedly kind.

A problem loosens.

An answer arrives.

You hear a song you forgot you loved.

You laugh.

And somehow, without realizing when it happened, you are standing again.

Then one day you’re back on that wave, hair flying, convinced you can take on the entire world before breakfast.

This too is life.

The rising and the falling.

The holding and the releasing.

The certainty and the doubt.

We suffer most when we believe we are supposed to remain permanently in one part of the cycle.

Always successful.

Always joyful.

Always peaceful.

Always strong.

Nothing in nature behaves that way.

The tide doesn’t apologize for going out.

The moon doesn’t panic because it cannot remain full.

A tree doesn’t consider itself a failure when its leaves fall.

There is a rhythm underneath everything.

Perhaps there is one underneath us too.

So I return to the meditation.

Imagine the crashing waves.

Thoughts, fears, responsibilities and emotions striking against the rocks with spectacular drama.

They can make quite a show of themselves.

We can stand at the edge and allow every wave to hit us.

We can chase each thought.

Argue with each fear.

Rehearse each disappointment.

Try to solve tomorrow before today has even finished.

Or perhaps we can move a little farther back.

Not because the waves have stopped.

Because we have stopped standing where they break.

There is a deeper place within us.

Quiet.

Unhurried.

Untouched by most of the things we spend our days worrying about.

You don’t have to live there forever today.

Maybe you cannot.

Maybe today you can only visit for a minute.

Then visit.

Sit down.

Put everything beside you.

You can pick it all back up later if you still want to.

But perhaps when you reach for it again, one thing will no longer seem quite so heavy.

And perhaps tomorrow you will take another step away from the crashing waves.

And then another.

And another.

This is how we keep going.

Not always with great courage.

Not always with optimism.

Sometimes we keep going simply because morning came.

And we came with it.

Perhaps that is enough.

For today.

Peace be with you.

Hari Om Tat Sat