Striving and straightening life
A friend of mine has beautiful, long, curly hair. For years she would take time every morning to straighten it and attempt to tame it into something she thought was acceptable. I think she did this with varying degrees of success, a certain amount of frustration, but definitely with a lot of hard work!
And then one day, she stopped.
She decided she could be just as content with curly, untamed hair, as with straightened, neater hair. And that was it. She didn’t need to take the time, feel the frustration, make the judgements. She just decided to be at peace with her hair the way it was. To enjoy it, even.
What she told me next was really beautiful:
She said: ‘I realised that actually, that’s what I’d been doing in my life — trying to tame it, control it and make it how I thought it ought to be. Trying to straighten life!’
Lots of people aren’t really happy with their hair — it should be thicker, lighter, shinier, curlier, straighter, a different colour. We can spend time and money, trying to change some of those things. Or we might not bother.
But lots of people also aren’t happy with their life — it should be easier, more successful, more comfortable, less stressful, less pressured, people should be more co-operative, less annoying, the world should be less dangerous, more controllable, and so the list goes on.
And what lengths we go to trying to straighten life (including other people) — to make it (or them) fit with our expectations of how they should be. This takes an enormous amount of effort and striving — and even then most of it is unsuccessful! People, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, are very hard to change! The world seems pretty set on carrying on in plenty of ways that I’d rather it didn’t!
It’s impossible to imagine a time when there won’t be something that I need to strive to change or put right.
Unless there’s another way.
What if the strain and frustration we all feel isn’t the result of the things out there that ‘should’ be different, but are actually a result of our exhausting striving? Just like my friend, using valuable time and energy every day to tame her hair into something that seemed more acceptable (but actually wasn’t that great anyway!) we use enormous amounts of time and emotional and physical energy struggling against things that just don’t need to be fixed. When we see that our perception of what needs to be different or needs fixing is our own, made up by us, we can step back and have a rethink.
The time when there won’t be something that I need to strive to change or put right is the time when I realise that putting things ‘right’ isn’t my job. Then there’s nothing to do. No need to strive. I can look at what IS, and decide how to move forward, that being the case, rather than trying to remove the obstacle I see in my way. Recognising the role of my perception in creating a situation that ‘should be different’ enables me to experience the whole thing differently.
When everything looks like a nail, then the tool that I really seem to need most is a hammer.
When everything looks like a problem, then what I seem to need most is to strive to find a solution.
But what if those nails weren’t really nails at all? Looked at from a different angle they’re in fact seedlings? Hitting them with a hammer isn’t then necessary or helpful.
What if those problems weren’t really problems? Looked at from a different angle they’re opportunities, or challenges, or things to take into account or worked around? They might actually even be crap on the pavement of life that I have to step round or step over or wipe off as I continue on my way. But striving to get rid of them, change them or make sure they never happen is just an enormous extra effort, which very often doesn’t work anyway. I’d rather the dog poo wasn’t on the pavement in front of me, but given that it is, the best option is to take it into account as I continue walking — rather than stress about it and try to magic it out of my way.
Once we stop striving to straighten our lives, our thinking settles down. And into the space created within a settled mind, all sorts of other insights can come. The dynamic of our life changes, and with it all sorts of unforeseen and wonderful change can occur.
What if you stopped trying to straighten life? Why not give it a try for a week or two, and see what you notice?