How easy it is to look back after a trying time and wish that we had known back then what we know now, ie how the trial will end. If we had, we may not have lost our sleep/peace/mind/cool/sh*t or anything else that comes in handy during a trial. Typically, we only really relax when we know how things work out.
As humans, we are generally a bit crap at not knowing. This could be not knowing how things will work out, not knowing what to do or say or not knowing anything else that we want to know.
Just this week, a friend remarked how they know from experience that things usually work out. However, last week while going through some challenges, they got stressed because they forgot that things have a way of working themselves out. I could totally relate! How easy it is to wonder what we were getting in a state for, after we know how things work out. At least when they work out how we want or in a manageable way.
It is of course a different story when things don’t work out how we want or do work out how we really don’t want.
The following statement jumped out at me this week,
‘Fate leads us on a winding path and despite how bad a situation may appear, we can never really know how it will turn out. I’ll try to remember that, then maybe I won’t get so upset when things don’t go my way’.
This is from The cat who taught zen, by James Norbury.
The fact is that sometimes things go our way and sometimes they don’t. And when they don’t, we may learn things we don’t learn when they do. These may be things we wish we didn’t have to learn and yet we do learn and we do come through. Or we don’t learn and the lesson comes around again (and again). One way or another (short or long), we continue to come through. Until we don’t because we will all die in the end. Keeping our heads up our derrieres about this doesn’t make it any less true, it simply stops us seeing, savouring and actively choosing how to play whatever cards we continue to be dealt.
Life is a series of beginnings, endings and middles. In the middle we know only what has been before and not yet what is to come. How we navigate the not knowing that precedes the new knowing will determine how enjoyable or otherwise, these middle times of transition will be.
Like all other muscles, the only way any of us can develop and strengthen our ‘keeping our cool’ muscle is by being in situations that challenge our cool keeping capacity.
Practice doesn’t make us perfect but it can make us calmer during the trial. Allegedly!