We want and need constants in life. We want certainty and we want (and love) control.
Because those things are somewhat hard to come by, when we do get them, we hold on for dear life. Literally.
To be fair, life without some measure of certainty would be too chaotic. But the thing about life is that it doesn’t let you rest in that certainty for too long.
Sometimes, though, you get want you want; you get to keep your constants. You take comfort in the predictable and the expected. It’s a sigh of relief.
If you’re not careful, though, eventually those very constants start to close up the space around you; they start to take over and become all-controlling.
Things begin to feel the same-old, same-old. You lose sight of what matters and what you’re working toward. Surface dissatisfactions sink deeper, and beliefs you’ve been holding on to begin to hold you back. But because it’s your constant, your certainty, you’re comfortable and invested and can’t stray too far. In a desert of chaos, even a tiny pool of control is an oasis.
But as frustrating as chaos might be, it is actually a good thing.
It has taken me many years to appreciate how my failures and detours—i.e., chaos—helped me grow, because otherwise I would’ve continued hanging on tightly to dissatisfactions that had mushroomed into misery, and decided that’s how life had to be.
I read somewhere that most people confuse their life situation with their actual life, which is an underlying flow beneath everyday events.
When life situations get difficult, we’re much better off channeling our energy toward redefining the challenge looming over us instead of resisting it.
We can take a pause from perceiving those situations as a threat to our certainty, and not let a single problem or a problem in one aspect of our life consume us so completely that we forget to live our actual life.
When in doubt, we can refine our response to what we’re facing and redefine what we’re seeking.
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