Life is a living thing
We can’t know the outcome, we can only know ourselves
Can any living thing be fully controlled?
Cultivated and domesticated, maybe. Fully predictable for all time? No way.
Even the hundred-year apple orchard is a few neglectful seasons away from returning to the creeping wild.
Life is the same way.
It will only allow brief seasons of cultivation. It always returns to its inherent wildness.
Weedy tragedies will ransack your tidy orchard: death, injuries, sickness, lost jobs, natural disasters. Every life has terrible loss. Beauty too—by its own hand, life sows seeds of unplanned joy! The child you kiss at night, the love of your life, the art you make, the unexpected thing that changed your heart for the better.
Change is the dirt we grow in as living things.
And this is very hard.
It’s exhausting steering life between the familiar and feral. It’s honestly bananas, you have to adapt, adapt, adapt indefinitely. When do you stop? When do you just sit down and say, “I’m done growing now!”
Anxiety will have you believe that this constant change is the enemy. “If you can keep things just-so, life will be easier. You will find a cozy homeostasis full of mono-culture moments where nothing deviates from the plan.”
But, anxiety is our response to fear not our response to life.
The seasonality of life is by design. Not your design, sure, but the design of a world where infinite inputs are carving out the shape of your story without your permission. (This is important to remember: life doesn’t ask for your permission).
When you try to control life, you miss the chance to see how adaptive you actually are. Adapting to life’s changes is one of your core gifts. It’s actually how you stay alive. Every blip you overcome is you increasing in resilience. Resilience keeps the tree fruiting. It’s what fights blight, weathers storms, and sends roots looking for hidden sources of water in rocky terrain.
Facing the truth that life is beyond my choices alone is one of the things that freed me. I can’t control it… it’s wild! And with that admission, I’ve felt a sense of partnership with life rather than the stress of constantly trying to rule the unruly.
My mom always told me, “Life is a living thing.”
So let yours be alive.