Pretty Lynne Writes

It’s a major tenet of Buddhism, as I understand it, that suffering is caused by resistance. Accept what is happening to and around you, and move in strength from there. 

So often your brain tells you “No, it can’t be true that X is happening,” when in fact, X is very much happening. X is happening all over you, in a messy and awful way. But accepting X means that you have to accept the feelings that come along with X, and the changes that X brings to your life, and your brain has a primary job that it’s trying to achieve: to protect you. 

So your brain says “no,” even while the winds of X blow around you and branches and debris fly at you, and you watch the walls of your shelter wobble and shake. 

X doesn’t have to be catastrophic to shake the walls of your shelter. 

X could be…

“My kid wants more independence”

“My family doesn’t believe in my politics”

“I don’t love him/her”

“My car needs new parts”

“These pants don’t fit me” 

“I need glasses”

“She never calls me back”

“This habit isn’t serving me anymore”

Does accepting X mean the winds calm? 

No, of course not. But it means you can feel scared, worried, angry, or bitter, and find a way to stand in the wind. 

At a particularly difficult moment in my life, a person told me to take things one step at a time. “Perseverance. All day,” they wrote. 

My first step was acknowledging that what I feared happening was, in fact, happening. Did it make the next step any easier?

No fucking way. But it made it possible.

I’ve long been a fan of Rainer Maria Rilke. I was one of those college kids who carried Letters to a Young Poet around with me to read on the bus. 

Rilke wrote a poem called “Go to the Limits of Your Longing,” in which the poet speaks the voice of God, advising people on how to move in the world. There’s a stanza that has become meaningful to me:

Notice the advice begins with “let everything happen;” the good and the bad must be allowed in your life, accepted for what they are. 

But it’s the last piece of this stanza that has got me through some hard fucking days: “No feeling is final.”

Everything changes. Are you happy? Wonderful, but it will change. Are you sad? I’m so sorry to hear that, but it will change. Are you scared? I know you are. Look that fear in the face, and know that it will change. 

By accepting the beauty and terror, you can stand in the wind and bend gracefully with it, knowing its direction will shift. 

Just keep going. Perseverance, all day.