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Living on the Edge
Striving for spiritual growth always puts me face-to-face with the stark reality of how much it depends on letting go of the need for certainty and control. I wish I could say that I’m someone who’s good at surrendering and trusting things to play out the way they’re supposed to, but that would be a lie. There’s a big part of me that truly believes life would be better if I could just get a quick peek at how it all turns out — like skipping ahead to the last page of a book — I’m not asking for a lot of detail; I just want to generally know that it all works out in the end, and then I know I would calm down and be a better person. But I try to allow myself to be inspired by spiritual teachings that tell us that the opposite is actually true, that gaining more certainty is not part of the recipe for a happy life. Buddhist practitioner and environmental activist Joanna Macy says:
“When you make peace with uncertainty you find a kind of liberation. You are freed from bracing yourself against every piece of bad news, and from constantly having to work up a sense of hopefulness in order to act –which can be exhausting. There’s a certain equanimity and moral economy that comes when you are not constantly computing your chance of success.”
So, since giving up this need to know and control things is an area of growth for me, and probably always will be, I have the greatest admiration for…
