Every now and again, we unwillingly stumble into the realization that something, if not everything, is out of our control.
And as dreadful as this realization may typically feel, it’s usually accompanied by a resonating sense of peace — whether that peace is sourced from a blissful resignation of circumstance or from a wholesome surrendering of effort.
It’s at this existential intersection, one that we don’t get to frequent all too often, that we interact with one of the truest and most potent of universal laws — that everything is always changing, moving, never static and never still.
In the best describable (and often used) analogy: everything is like a wave.
Our reality is more dynamic than we seem to accept and comprehend, rightfully so given our unique human perspective, our relationship with time, our relative inability to transcend our sensory perceptions, and the general limits of our comprehension.
Interestingly, we can turn the tides on the reality of, well, how we perceive our reality. We can gain so much from swimming with the currents of how everything works rather than trying to swim against them.
From this acquiescence to the greater forces at play, we can gain an ease and momentum that is otherwise lost.
It’s simple physics.
By now, we’ve ascertained that any assumption of permanence is illusory.
Whether we approach it from the East or the West, from textbooks or experiences, we know very well that nothing lasts forever.
Yet we inherently shy away from this fact, as it can be an uncomfortable one — no matter how much bravado is thrown at it, no matter how many times it’s rehearsed or coerced into our perspective, no matter how dramatically it presents itself to us through life.
We try to anchor elements of our existence despite the fact that any anchor will inevitably give way to the erosions of time and the dissolution of perspective. We try to extract and create enduring stability and constancy from the fleeting and unstable nature of our world and, especially, ourselves.
In doing so, we create tension along the chain links of our conscious perception of how everything is supposed to work; our resistance causes friction, all of which can be regarded as wasted energy.
All the while we risk disregarding the waves that carry us, waves that we are no less a part of than anything else.
These waves themselves, moving in a discordant unanimity and flowing through everything — because they are everything — demonstrate the infinitude of existence through their own dynamism and potentiality.
It is here we circle to the realization that change, chaos, movement — the unknown variability of life — is as ripe with positive potential as it is with negative potential.
And, believe it or not, it’s certainly possible for us to sway the tides in our favor, even if just a little bit.
The more we ground (or unground) our existence in potentiality and forward-looking possibility, the more we lean into the inherent truth that pulsates through everything.
Life is literally comprised of possibility — of probability and of potentiality — due to the constancy of our movement through it.
To disregard or oppose this fact is to stop moving, to stop swimming, and to drown under the weight of inactivity, into the static abyss of changeless existence.
To, rather, move forward and flow with the tides of our dynamic reality is to make like the waves of everything that flows around us, tapping into the momentum and moving with relative ease towards wherever it is we’re intended to be (note that this may be far and away from where it is we want to go — perhaps for the better).
To let go of judgements that don’t benefit us; to end the masquerades of vanity and the pirouettes of prideful indignation; to not take every action thrown at us personally and to not try to control every element of our lives; to be as much as we do and to stop trying to anchor our existence however we can.
Only then do we encounter that special kind of raw and spontaneous sort of existence that we seem to be longing to find everywhere but from within.