“Ego says, ‘Once
everything falls into place, I’ll feel peace.’ Spirit says, ‘Find your peace,
and then everything will fall into place.’” –Marianne Williamson
Living with life’s
basic, foundational uncertainty is not my strong suit, though I am getting
better at recognizing when I’m fruitlessly struggling against it. In truth,
though, I must count myself among the former who are always waiting for
everything to fall into place—then I
can relax.
However, what if
we flipped the thing around? What if we simply started living more generously
and spontaneously, with a greater sense of openness and ease? It seems to me a
life grounded in this spirit augers well for the peace we all crave in our
lives and a measure of composure to boot.
But this,
obviously, requires relaxing—efforting less and allowing more.
It also requires
coming to terms with Life’s realities, and ourselves as an inextricable part of
its expression—its/our unpredictability, its/our being in eternal motion, its/our
light and dark sides.
Nietzsche’s
concept of ‘Amor fati’ may be helpful here. Translated very loosely it points
to a love of one’s fate, but, as with all things philosophical, it isn’t quite
that simplistic. It points more in the direction of a love of reality for
itself:
“Amor fati is
the embrace of the world that is as it is—eternally Becoming—not as it “should”
be, for there is no “should,” no imperative that it be, or be transformed into,
something other than it is. Put differently, Amor fati is the embrace of a
world that is an implicate order of freedom and necessity: of freedom in that
it is free from any “should” that would judge it to be deficient, and from any
goal that “should” be attained, and of necessity because the lack of a goal to
be achieved allows the world its “must,” its having to be what it is, not what
it is made by an authority beyond the perimeters of the world.” (Friedrich Ulfers and Mark Daniel Cohen. Nietzsche’s
Amor Fati – The Embracing of an Undecided Fate. Poiesis – A Journal of
the Arts and Communication. 2002.)
I find this
tremendously freeing—the idea that, on one level, there is nothing for us to
achieve in a cosmos that is only in the business of eternally Becoming—life-death-life…the
dark a necessary and intrinsic part of the light—an incessant coming and going,
arising and subsiding—a sort of cosmic breathing.
We need only be
ourselves. So, maybe relaxing into the thing, learning to work with it (rather than attempting to control it),
wondering and demonstrating greater respect and reverence for it is in order. How?
Meditate.
Breathe. Observe.
Find your peace.
