The Best Way to Live

Let life through

We can't close life off like we close a gate in the garden. Life has a way of slipping through the cracks! Photo by Rob.

Ever since we were toddlers we’ve been asking the Why? question.

Why are apples round? Why do I have to go to bed when the sun is still up? Why is Grandma’s face wrinkly?

Occasionally – and far too often as far as we were concerned – our Why? question was answered with one world: Because.

Now that we’re grown up, we want to know more important things. Why won’t my car start? (You need a new car battery.) Why didn’t I get that dream job? (Someone else was more qualified.) Why is there only $22 left in my account? (You went on a shopping spree in the January sales.) Why did my friend die? (She had cancer.)

But sometimes, like the children we once were, we must accept that the only answer to our Why? question is: Because.

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When something drastic occurs to us or to those we love, we want a proper answer to our Why did this happen? question which will explain it so well that the question will disappear and never return.

In other words, we want what we call Closure.

But life doesn’t work that way.

Life doesn’t open and shut like a gate in a garden. It doesn’t let some things through and keep other things out based on personal desires.

Life has a way of always slipping through the cracks!

Life is wide open. It accepts, without judgement or censorship, everything that spills out into it.

It would take eternity to explain why any single event happened. Every moment, which includes the events within it, is a result of countless other moments that came before it.

Nothing happens in isolation.

Life is a result, an outgrowth, of all that has come before.

We can make plans, do our best to choose the path of least pain, twist ourselves into a Gordian Knot trying to avoid what we don’t want, but none of us lives in a vacuum.

We can’t retreat into an impervious bubble and shut life out.

As the John Lennon song, ‘Beautiful Boy’ says:

Life is what happens to you While you’re busy making other plans.

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Do you want to sense deep, abiding peace no matter what happens?

The only way to experience this is to always accept what happens.

It’s a waste of time blocking it or denying it because it’s already here, demanding your attention. You can’t send it back to where it came from, so just let it through.

Let Life Through

In the past thirty years, Rob has planted many willow trees in the three acres that turn into a winter lake at Evergreen. They’re one of the few trees that can survive with their roots in water for months at a time. Winter storms batter their ageing branches, but they survive the ordeal by letting the wind blow through them.

Lao Tzu in Tao Te Ching:

A tree that is unbending is easily broken.

Let’s not be easily broken by life.

Let’s let it through.

Sometimes the answer to our Why? questions is simply: Because.

An eternity of events led up to and caused this moment.

That’s why the answer is Be-cause.

With love, Marlane