#464 – What part of "no reason" freaks you out?

The realization that things happen simply because they do––and they'll keep happening no matter how much protection you've racked up––can be brutal. It can make you feel alone against the world.

It can also be relaxing.

Once you realize there's nothing you could do to make things better, and nothing you do will make them worse, you're free. The world turns, and not because of you.

I came to this conclusion while doing my morning pages. The first thing I wrote was, "Writing morning pages is so easy and relaxing. I don't know why sometimes I don't want to do it." As I investigated the resistance I sometimes face against the practice, I noticed the word "control" floating somewhere in my mind.

Ah! Morning pages is anything but control. It's freedom, wild exploration, guardrails off. Is that what freaks me out?

Who am I without control?

Will I become fat and lazy if I stop restricting my food and disciplining myself into exercising? Will my brain go dead and my bills unpaid if I indulge in rest? Is that the reason why snow days in West Orange, NJ, felt so liberating: because it wasn't me choosing to rest but the weather forcing me to?

If I took all my present days as those snow days of forced inactivity, I'd relax into whatever the world brings me. I'd take each event as a necessary fact of the universe, something that happens for no reason and touches me so that I become wiser, more resilient. A higher being.

What will you stop trying to control, so you can relax into accepting life as it is?

Love,

Carolina