Things break

Filed under Notes on 30. June 2007 »

And indeed they do. A week ago, the hard drive in my laptop gave up the ghost. I had everything more or less backed up, so suffering was kept at a minimum, but it reminded me of how we always expect things that work to stay the same. If things are going well, in our judgment, we feel that they should continue going well. And if things are going badly, we want them to change.

Although it may sound overly dramatic in relation to the hard drive failure, and really it has nothing to do with that as such, but there is one thing we know for certain: things change. That is the law of the world of form and time. Things change; either for better or for worse, as we perceive it. Things go wrong, things get better. It is an endless cycle of growth and dissolution, same as the cycle of birth and death, the sea and the seasons.

And despite it being such a well established pattern, a fundamental law of nature pretty much, we are still surprised when things change. We try to control how they change: pushing things along when we're dissatisfied with the current state of something, and then resisting change when we finally get things to be as we want them to. Pushing and pulling, attempting to manhandle the universe according to our personal preferences.

This stubborn way of approaching things can go on for a long time, and even after a lifetime of having little or no control over things a person may still keep resisting the inevitability of change. Sometimes, and you can see it very clearly in old cats and dogs, after years and years of change from this polarity to that, there comes a point of surrender to what is. Not a defeatist shrinking back from life, but a recognition that what is simply is as it is. Pithy enough for a bumper sticker, and as simple as simple gets, but seemingly near-impossible for most people to realize.

Surrendering to what is — it is a way of being in alignment with life. You can still act and attempt to change things, but only when there is no attachment to the result of that action are you in alignment to what is. The default attitude of our conditioning is to argue with what is, hoping in some way that the world will feel guilty and change things back, but in order to be at peace with the law of continuous change, or birth and death, growth and dissolution, one must step back and allow things to do as they will. Taking action if needed, but in a humble way that more resembles a suggestion than an order.

And maybe that is a good way of looking at it. We can make a suggestion, but never issue an order to the universe. Knowing this, we are at peace with the world.