Life at its essence is not to be prepared for, only lived—and that is its only true preparation. It unfolds as a continual mystery, each life an unknown flower, unique unto its own, none of which have been previously discovered, none belonging to any species. The totality of its plans is not laid down in the seed, but emerges over time, to be discovered, in the experience that is life itself. Life is not set, it simply emerges.
Indescribable, beyond comprehensibility, without a name or a label—the more we try to lay down exactly what life is supposed to be out of a desire for confidence, for ourselves or anyone else, the less confident we are really feeling. Confidence is lost as a strict definition of it immediately removes ourselves from the process of life’s emergence, and therefore the living of life itself. When we are immersed in living, and when we surrender to the mystery, we feel the most confident. This is because we “give up” illusory control.
Can something be truly “given up” if it is an illusion? We are not losing, but only gaining. We regain the feeling a child has of life, with the beauty and excitement of its mystery, of having the ineffability of life before us. It does not mean we cannot plan or that it is useless to plan, but planning can never make anything absolutely certain nor guarantee a feeling of fulfillment.
A flower is cared for and tended to so it can grow and thrive, and we care for and tend to ourselves so we may grow and thrive. When we care for and tend to ourselves by engage mentally and physically in the activities of life, making plans and act on our ideas, involving ourselves in life in various ways, we are creating ways for ourselves to grow and thrive.
But what specifically these plans, ideas, activities, involvements “should” accomplish, or how they “have to” play out in order to be happy or fulfilled cannot be guaranteed. In fact, the more we insist on such certainty, the farther we seem from the feeling of fulfillment or happiness we seek. The more we are tied to a specific story of how any of these things should lead to self-completion, the more abstracted we are from experience of life in itself—and that in itself is what takes away from appreciating life, of experiencing life as it emerges mysteriously before us.
Incessant action and procrastination both result from the same mindset—that things must play out a certain way in life to be fulfilled and happy. They are just opposite ways of responding to the heavy pressure of such thinking, one through excessiveness and the other through paralysis. The feeling of mystery, that knowing that life will play itself out rather than “I play it out,” liberates us to take actions with a lightness unburdened by the need of a result. This is what being one with emergence of life is.
There is no life that had played out or will play out exactly like our own. We can have people that inspire us for they are like us in one way or another, but each life no matter how similar will still be very distinctively its own, following a highly unique path. We engage in the activities of life, we make plans, work on our ideas, but things will arrive on their own time. And I take pleasure in not knowing how they will, and even what exactly these things are.
