The first step in changing things is to see them as they are" - Confucius
As I stared into the stream I thought about what Sophia had said. My life had none of the circumstance of sudden tragic misfortune, but I was still thinking about my visit with Jenny. This idea of acceptance could be potentially paralyzing. What about planning? What about making choices and acting on them? On the other hand, in spite of plans and goals, choices which are wholly appropriate at the time they are made, pile upon one another over the years and , like a slight movement at the apex of an angle, often result in a dramatic arc of change. It seems that life sometimes continues to unfold almost of it’s own accord, by turns in accordance with ,or in spite of our actions, until we find ourselves looking around one day and asking how we came to the life we now live.
Sophie got up and began to walk.
"Yes I know. But the deeper question you’re asking is whether its OK to be where you are now, isn’t it? Should you be somewhere else, someone else? You are considering the duality of choice and chance, of determinism and fatalism. When do I move and when do I flow? Are your present circumstances an aberration, some sort of fluke, or is there a rightness, appropriateness, some sort of internal ‘oughtness’ to how your life has unfolded, built into and expressed by even, or especially the variances from your plan.
You have been raised in a country with a culture of self reliance where individual action is revered ,in a generation for whom proactivity is a mantra. and the management of everything from finances to time itself the highest goal. Yet life keeps intruding of its own and messing up your schedule. You are asking whether all of that is OK, and by extension whether you, right now and as you are, are OK as well. Is a man’s faithfulness to himself to be found in tenaciously sticking to a single path, or is it perhaps found in his ability to adjust and take a different road? You wonder whether you are off course, but are not entirely sure what the right course would be. All of this is because you are seeing a duality where by and large one does not exist. You have lost the ability to appreciate the interruptions, from the minor to the tragic, as a part of the process itself. They are not aberrations, they are the path. Again, that acceptance is the starting point.
As I said, I’m not talking about repression or denial dressed up in spiritual terms. On the contrary, the power of acceptance lies precisely in your ability to see clearly and is proportional to your ability to be realistic about what you see in front of you.
Realism is the yang to the yin of acceptance. It is the complement, the balance of action which ensures us against a simple passive observation, and recognizes our ability to contribute to the shape of our lives and our future. You see there is a tension there? Good, then you see the operative understanding that makes for a life of wisdom. There is a time to act and a time to wait, yet our actions are informed by our waiting and our waiting made confident by our ability to act. The two cannot be separated. To that extent, even the choice to accept is an active one. Let’s get a bit more practical since I think that this issue is so very critical to living with wisdom.
To be realistic involves your relationship to truth and can be looked at from two complementary perspectives:
a. outward oriented
b. inward oriented.
Outward realism involves the elements of your decision that are congruent with your external reality. You’ve probably heard the expression, "If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it’s probably a duck. That is a great way of expressing a truth that we often ignore and generally pay the price to do so. We see every day how a person can get swept up in a decision disregarding what seems obvious to those around him. In business, in relationships, we see what we want to see. It is very easy to set aside what we intuitively know to be true so that we can allow ourselves to make a decision to do or not do something. How many relationships are struggling because of basic incompatibilities which have always been there but had been ignored or glossed over?. I have known far too many men and women who entered into a marriage with the idea that they could change their mate in time rather than with the understanding that the person they marry will probably be essentially that same person the next year and the years after that. Again, a person may choose to ignore their external reality by not wanting to look too deep or ask too many questions for fear that they will uncover something which would conflict with what they have already decided to do. A young lady put it very succinctly to me one day when she said " I didn’t look into it very hard, didn’t ask questions I should have because I already had enough to do and did not want to complicate things any further. What a perceptive insight she had made! The release of closing an issue out, of ending a period of uncertainty can be so strong that we will move towards it with our eyes closed if necessary. Unfortunately, that is magical thinking, childish thinking that ignores our own responsibility in the hope that someone out there will take care of things, that somehow everything will work out. This often amounts to little more than crossing our fingers and hoping for the best. Choosing not to stop and get gas out of some vague hope that this time the car will go longer on empty than it ever has before, or that I can continue to run up debt on my charge cards and somehow , by ignoring the possibility for disaster, disaster will be averted. Unfortunately, this type of thinking is foolishness and bound to result in the very thing you are trying to avoid. As a great teacher once said, no man starts to build a tower unless he first counts the cost to be sure that he can finish it. Or , coming at it from another angle, someone has said that doing the same thing over and over and hoping for a different result is the definition of insanity. Pay attention to your external reality.
On the other hand, Inward realism is another term for honesty and deals with what you do with the facts of your external reality. Once you have gotten clear on the particulars of what you see around you, you then must use that understanding to reach a good conclusion. This is where you ask yourself:
'Is this decision, or option or perception:'
1. Consistent with the facts as I know them?
2. Consistent with reason?
3. Consistent with my values?
4. Consistent with my experience and the experience of others?
And it is here that action and inaction are seen to be of the same essence,......
"Sam, people say that we are free to make any choice we want, and that we can have any life we want if we will only choose it and then go after it. In many ways that is true enough, but what people don't talk much about is that very often a person may voluntarily choose to limit his choices in the name of something greater. We don't live in an age which recognizes or values the sacrifice of self as a strong act, an aspect of love. Just the opposite. We are told that by focusing on getting what you want you will be more lovable, better able to love those around you as a fulfilled human being. We have turned things around so that choosing selfishly becomes the highest act of selflessness. We have worked out a popular system of belief in which what I want is what is best. What feels best for me is always the highest good. Surely you can see the limitations in that. Your life at the moment is the result of hundreds of decisions over the years. Decisions to marry, to go to school or to have children. To work in one job instead of another, to move many times or to stay in one place. And today, you are a married man with two children working in a corporation and wanting to simplify your life. But life is complicated and I’m sure that even your friend Jenny has her own multiple concerns to deal with. Concerns very different than yours perhaps, but still there to be dealt with. The hermit life is very simple but also very lonely and you had better be sure you are called to it before dragging your family off on a quest only you can see. You have made your decisions, you will make others yet. Take your time and move slowly. You will find the way if you look with a heart that is open to finding simplicity in the moment. Start with your own mind and heart and simplify there first. That is how you find the path with heart."
I thought that what she had been saying struck at the core of my issues, my lack of acceptance with how my life had been unfolding. Still, it was a tricky business navigating through the many choices, from the mundane to the pivotal that each day presents us. So much anxiety and second guessing, often continuing to churn over a decision even after having made a choice. I asked whether Sophia had any advice in this area.
"The time to worry over a decision is before you make it, not after. Every decision has it's benefits and it's costs. Every decision has more than one equally good solution. We are conditioned to think there is only one perfect and acceptable solution, and we have to find that one or we have failed. The truth is that life if infinitely varied and so are it's challenges, and their solutions. Be gentle with yourself. Let me give you a truth that helped me tremendously:
You can settle it now, you are not perfect, which means that you are incapable of consistently perfect reasoning, choices, reactions, etc.
Get used to it. You will make some bad decisions, none of them will be fatal. You can then move on and make a different one, probably a better one than you could have made without it. As someone once said,
Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.
Accept that the movement from where you are to where you want to be is probably not a one step process.
Watch the details, your path is made up of the thousands of little decisions you make every day. In what you create and in how you respond to that which you did not create. Everything matters, but nothing matters so completely as to preclude any further adjustments. That’s what many people miss.
We are all looking for that one big hit, the one thing that will change everything, get us the life that we want. I'll tell you a secret, there is no big hit, there is no magic to the way things work. You get want you want through a process of choices, failures adjustments, partial successes, and persistence. Sometimes you get what you want by changing what you want. The emphasis on goal setting and the understanding that we don’t have to be helpless in our lives has been a mixed blessing. It is true that we can accomplish much more than we might think possible. It is also true though, that often a person can set goals, work toward them, stay focused, and life just doesn’t work out the way they are expecting. If you’re not ready for that, it can come as quite a shock.
The story is told of a navy captain who, sailing in a heavy fog, was informed that a light had been sighted ahead , directly in line with his ship’s present course. He called his ensign to the bridge and ordered him to signal them to change course by 5 degrees. The ensign did as ordered and a signal came back, "you change course by 5 degrees. The captain ordered the ensign to reply "I am a captain in the US Navy, change your course by 5 degrees." The reply came back, "I am an ensign first class, you change your direction by 5 degrees." The captain was furious and shot back the message, this is a battleship change your course by 5 degrees, to which came the reply, "This is a lighthouse, you change your course by 5 degrees"
Having a direction, and perseverance is good, but its not a guarantee. Sometimes we come across things in our life which cannot be moved or changed. Most people set their expectations, and then if after much effort and focus they are not getting what they want, they often become bitter, or overly compulsive about achieving the goals, losing all balance and in the end frustrated and bitter.
The fact is that sometimes life has its own ideas, and its own flow and the best decision may at times be to accept that flow and change your goal. You must weigh your decisions carefully, which requires your ability to be realistic. Then when you decide, decide also to live with the results, good and bad, of that decision. By that I mean that you accept them. Giving them some space to unfold, then if you want to make a different decision, make it. But don’t beat yourself up for the choices you have made, or chain yourself to a course which is not working out. In short, be responsible for your life.
I’ve said before that most people’s frustrations come from the feeling that life shouldn’t be difficult or uncertain or changeable. But the reality is that it is all of those things. All of the worry or anxiety or struggling against this will not change it one iota. So why not learn to accept life as it comes and instead of asking yourself why me? Why this? Why now? Begin to ask yourself what now? What next? And take the next step, accepting that for reasons none of us can understand, some people seem to have more than their share of trouble in life while others seem to have very little and most of us are somewhere in the middle. We live lives with difficulties and challenges and heartache, but also with many small victories and unexpected joys and unasked for grace. In the end, I think it balances out pretty well.
