Acceptance vs. Pain

"Nobody’s life is entirely free of pain and sorrow. Isn’t it a question of learning to live with them rather than trying to avoid them?The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life.The pain that you create now is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind."
- Elkhart Tolle

I found this to be a very interesting perspective on pain, and when I think about it, it seems to make sense to me. I know very little of the Taoist philosophy, but my understanding is that it professes the idea that there is a "path" in every moment down which we should "flow." When we flow down the path through which we were meant to flow, we have peace and contentment. When we fight against the path and seek another way we are discontented and experience pain. It certainly seems true in my own experience that all forms of grief are finally released from our consciousness when we learn to truly accept them.

Food for Thought: Are there any elements of your life that you can accept in order to find peace?

Fortune, Fate, and Destiny

''Fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step."
-Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

I found this quote very interesting. People tend to vary widely in their assessment of the concepts of fate, fortune, and destiny. Some famous people (such as Lord Byron) believed that all we do is controlled by our fate or our destiny. Others (such as William Jennings Bryant) believed that fate and destiny were completely controlled by our own actions. I like the quote above because it presents a view that is more balanced.

Yes...we are tossed by storms in our life that are impossible to control, but not only do they stem partially from ourselves, they are able to be endured and thusly controlled by our own actions. We create our storms, we weather them. They are not entirely in our control or entirely out of it. Our lives are a balance of what we may do and what we must do.

Food for Thought: What occurrences in your life do you believe came about as part of your "destiny"?

Stepping Out

"All your life you are told the things you cannot do. All your life they will say you're not good enough or strong enough or talented enough; they will say you're the wrong height or the wrong weight or the wrong type to play this or be this or achieve this. THEY WILL TELL YOU NO... a thousand times no, until all the no's become meaningless. All your life they will tell you no, quite firmly and very quickly. AND YOU WILL TELL THEM YES."
- Nike Ad

I know it's just a commercial advertisement, but I LOVE this quote. In the end I don't suppose it matters one bit what other people think of us, what they tell us we can or can't accomplish. All that matters is what we believe...what we know in our hearts to be the truth.

I am starting on a new venture myself, and I am truly terrified. But I also have that sharp, almost painful excitement that comes from taking a risk and hoping for the best. Stepping out into the unknown and trying to clear the void...what else keeps us alive?

Proactive Inspiration Video: This concept reminds me of a new song by James Blunt, "One of the Brightest Stars." It speaks to the concept that people love to hitch their wagon to a star and try, in some way, to share in the glory. But when things go south, they are nowhere to be found. Check out the video on the top left.

Proactive Inspiration Challenge: Take responsibility for your failures, you and you alone, so that when you succeed you will take responsibility for that as well.

Magic

"I do believe in magic. We all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put in the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God’s sake. And you know why we’re told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wilderness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad at what they allowed to whither in themselves. After you get so far away from it, though, you can’t really get it back. You can have seconds of it. Just seconds of knowing and remembering. When people get all weepy at movies, it’s because in that dark theatre, the golden pool of magic is touched, just briefly. Then they come out into the hard sun of logic and reason again and it dries up, and they’re left feeling a little heartsad and not knowing why. For the briefest of instants, you have stepped into the magic realm. The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us. We get shouldered with burdens, some of them good, some of them not so good. Things happen to us. Loved ones die. People get in wrecks, and get crippled. It’s not hard to do, in this world of crazy mazes. Life itself does its best to take that memory of magic away from us. You don’t know its happening until one day you feel like you’ve lost something, but you’re not sure what it is."
-Robert McCammon

Food for Thought: Do you believe in magic?

Proactive Inspiration Challenge: Remember the magic. Allow yourself to feel the quiet magic of a sunny day or the gentle happiness of the breeze stirring the leaves.