You Don’t Know Everything And That’s Just Fine

That was my expression for a good part of the past couple of weeks. Image by Anemone123 via Pixabay

In the past couple of weeks, I have found myself challenged when it came to sticking to this affirmation of mine that I have considered the gold standard approach to dealing with just about everything. It goes a bit like this: “I must stick to the apparent facts and let logic and rationality guide my decision-making, nothing more and nothing less”.

It sounds simple and crisp, and it leaves me with an action plan pretty much written out for me once I figure out the steps I need to take to get me to point B. It’s the easiest and most logical way to carry on, right?

But let’s just say I found myself in a little pickle, and things got a bit murkier than that.

Focusing on the present and tangible stopped being enough and I was sucked into a vortex that had been shaped by all the “I thinks” and “maybes” that danced around my thoughts.

But then I remembered why I have that mantra at all.

I remembered, again, that anything I can’t control or act upon right now isn’t any of my business. Come to think of it, it isn’t yours either.

None of us are responsible for trying to preemptively resolve things that may or may not happen sometime in the future/trying to control what someone is thinking or feeling about us/anything else that isn’t in our immediate control. And when it is time to face those things, we’ll know exactly what to do and how to do it. And if we don’t get it right, there’s room to fix things.

I know how hard it is to let go and just live in the moment. If I personally had the choice, I would be very tempted to leap at the opportunity to control things from start to finish and plan everything to the last detail. But even as I continue to grapple between trying to be relaxed and clear-thinking, and letting my anxious, control-freak tendencies get the best of me, I always end up being relieved when I let the choice to live in the present win.

More often than not, things turn out just fine or even better. That’s the sweetness of the unknown, and it’s handy for keeping us on track with our journeys to all things bigger and better. And when the outcome is more disappointing than that, what’s the worst that could happen? We’ll just have to survive and eventually, carry on like we always have.

Eat Pie, Don’t Live It

This is not a metaphor for life. Image by Capri23auto via Pixabay

Everyone wants to live a peaceful life at some level. A few peaks and troughs do make things interesting, but in general, I think I can speak for the vast majority of people by saying that some (particularly inner) peace and stability is essential for staying content. We probably all realise as well that gratefulness for what we have and gratitude helps massively in maintaining that peace.

So what’s any of this to do with pie?

Well, in the past few years and more so, recently, I have started really believing that living a good, fulfilling life doesn’t have to come by constant pushing, shoving and competing with other people for all the dangling carrots that appear on our way. We don’t have to hate our current state to do well, and we can actually just take it all quite lightly and go on achieving what we set out to do. No rancour, no endless competitiveness, nothing; just hard work, taking what we need to on the chin and getting on.

I no longer believe that operating in scarcity mode is the best way to get results. In fact, it’s just stressful and seeing people achieve with a lot less emotional drainage has been enlightening and a bit annoying because I realised that I could actually do it too — so could everyone.

The opportunities and resources that can help us live good lives aren’t limited because we aren’t all scrambling for pieces of a pie that will run out. We can get to point B through a different route or maybe through the same one, just in a different time and set of circumstances.

Someone else’s success doesn’t necessitate our own failure, even when it’s identical to the type of success we’ve been seeking. We can (and should!) even celebrate other people’s successes because we don’t live our lives at each other, but rather alongside one another. And opportunities do tend to show up in different shapes and sizes for different people and at different times, and sometimes we have to make our own when we don’t find them. And that’s okay because when the time comes, we will figure out how and see that we can.

The point is, it’s pointless being in an eternal race against everyone and anything we think could hamper our chances of just doing or being what we want. Things will happen the way they’re supposed to, so let’s just try to do/be the thing and relax while we’re at it. We’ll probably be just fine whatever happens and a lot happier than we imagined.