Thoughts on Accepting Things that Aren't Ours to Change
Some folks are going to play a role in your life that’s intended to be a lesson and that’s it. The struggles we have with others are often painful because we each fail to
acknowledge that we’re all “fighting a battle” of some kind. I spent a lot of time learning that recognizing a thing for what it is has no bearing on a shift in the thing itself. A mountain is a mountain not meant for me to move. This revelation has given me the emotional freedom to take a step back and look at the beauty of an obstacle in my life and just accept it for what it is. It is its own separate entity with an entire existence all its own that has nothing to do with me except for the contact points. It is not mine to affect or judge.
Though the mountain has been there my whole life, my interactions with it have differed throughout the years. When I was young I don’t really think I saw it as a mountain. It was just there in the backdrop. I have wondered if maybe back then it was only a hill and it gradually grew into a mountain? I’m not sure… I look back and I can’t recall if I just didn’t see it for what it was.
Over the years I’ve had a mixture of feelings about the mountain. I thought I could navigate it. I tried many times, many ways and had to finally accept it was not navigable. It was impenetrable! Insurmountable! The truth is, it just didn’t look as unforgiving as it really is. And I had so much hope! Equally, I had a lot of frustration. It felt very personal … like, why did every hopeful trail become a dead end? The terrain, unsteady, created rocky setbacks to make peace with. Then there was the struggle of the choking brush and craggy roots systems, none of which were evident until I was in the thick of it. As much as I wished it to be an easy thing, it was not. No matter the effort, it seemed annoyingly impossible.
So then I really started reflecting on this mountain. And like the memory of the mountain itself, this consideration provided new understandings. I realized that, at first, I saw the mountain the way I wanted to see it. That’s okay until you expect it to behave in the way you want. That’s a letdown for sure. I began to see this mountain for exactly what it is. Large and unwavering. Big, so big….and not going anywhere. It gave me all the signs that it did not wish to be challenged. Stubbornness! That was my judgment until I understood that it isn’t my mountain and began to gracefully accept the mountain chooses to be just as it is.
In fact, the mountain was there long before me, evident through rugged crevasses and density of forest, none of which ever extended invitations for solutions. Maybe my journey was the acceptance that sometimes there is no easy path….Move it? No. Over it? No. Through it? No. To me, those seemed like the easy opportunities for resolution, but some lessons ask you to surrender to an extended journey; the long way around, insisting that it be seen from all sides and then leave it be. At first it didn’t feel very fair that I had to travel around the mountain. I thought to myself, you mean the mountain just gets to sit there, taking no accountability for being an obvious obstruction? Why am I doing all the work? Why am I having to make all the effort? The mountain did NOTHING to make the journey easier nor did it seem to care, but all these thoughts assumed that the mountain’s journey had anything to do with mine. It turns out, my journey is nothing like the mountain. Sometimes the answer is that there is no answer except for a slow unfolding of patience; the allowance of letting things be just what they are.
Sometimes there are struggles and situations that aren’t ours to hold onto….or even to understand. We just have to go around….and wish it well as we pass it by.
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