A chain of surprises

Anxiety kept me focused on the things that I couldn’t change. It fed on my struggles and suffering. I have decided to change the situation. I have started to change how I approach things, I no longer let them overwhelm me. What I want to do is still more than I can do, but I am fine with not being able to do everything.

What matters to me has never changed, I only lost sight of it because of the pressure I was under. All my worries, and my failure to understand that change can only come from action, grew my fears until I could see nothing else.

It took only a week away from my worries to change my perspective. What I see in my life now is much closer to reality. I still worry sometimes, but I understand that I have to base my actions on what is real, not on what my mind decides to make up, under the influence of fear.

Life is a chain of surprises. Each of them becomes known when it is received. When that happens all that is left to do is try your best. You can try to refuse the surprise, run from it, wonder why you, but it won’t help make things better.

You are your own guide in the journey of life. None of us has been given a map for this, so you need to pay attention, do your best, and don’t make it harder than it needs to be. The events coming your way will need to be embraced so they can help you grow.

Just as you can’t stop the flow of a river, but you can swim, in the same way, you can’t avoid life but you can live it. To engage with what it brings it’s a better way than to avoid everything. Life is always flowing, but we are unable to see it as such. This is why we perceive it as a series of separate moments.

For these disconnected moments, the element tying them together is the person whose life we’re talking about. The mind makes sense of what it sees by taking snapshots of everything it deems important, but in doing so there is a lot of information being left out.

In truth, what was left out, does no longer exist. The choice was made to collect only the information stored in the snapshots. Every mind works in the same way. The process is continuous and without any conscious observation.

The kind of images that are taken of life is dictated by attention. Wherever the attention goes on a consistent basis, more images of the same kind will be stored inside. The mind acts like an autopilot designed to guide us through life while leaving us time to enjoy it.

But when it’s fed bad information, or when we are not aware of what is doing, we might end up in bad places. Our attention must always go towards the things that can help us, but it is hard to do when we fill our minds with old images that are no longer useful to us.

These old images need to make room for new, more useful images, that can enrich our lives. For this to be possible, we must become aware of what images we pick from life, to make sure they are of use in our evolution.

Life will always flow, and for us not to be swiped away, we must be aware of what makes its way into our minds.

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