Tag: working with the grain of life

Letting Life Be: The Ultimate In Playing BIG?


Recently, I had the privilege to be there for a friend whilst s/he was in the midst of suffering. S/he was sobbing -tears upon the cheeks – and clearly in the midst of sorrow.

Here is the thing I noticed and cannot help noticing: s/he lives in a good apartment in a good neighbourhood; s/he is good health – no life threatening or disabling diseases to deal with; s/he eats well; s/he has a vocation which bring meaning, income, social contact – even connection; s/he has interests/hobbies that occupy time and bring joy. Which is to say, it is clear that s/he lives a relatively privileged life and lacks for little when it comes to the necessities of life.

Nonetheless his/her suffering is real. And, so is mine when I have found myself in a similar situation. What is going on here?

It occurs to me that many of us if not almost all of us strive to put LIFE in a box. The box may be circular, rectangular, square, triangular, red, green, blue, purple, white, small, big…..The point is that we want LIFE to play nice – to fit into and stay within the box, the boundaries, we have created for it.

Now here is the thing, LIFE will not be put into a box. And, if one can put it into the box of one’s choosing then there is the effort/struggle in keeping it in this box. And, sooner or later LIFE escapes from this box. Using a different analogy, I throw the dice and I truly/deeply want LIFE to deliver a six. I might with skill and luck get a series of sixes. However, sooner or later LIFE will deliver a one, or a two, or a three…. This is simply what is so.

Given that LIFE will not be put into the box of one’s choosing, it occurs to me that the ultimate in playing BIG, is letting LIFE be: accepting LIFE as it is and is not; working with LIFE as in choosing to see whatever LIFE brings as a challenge/opportunity.

You might be asking yourself how can the suffering that life brings be seen as a challenge/opportunity. I leave you with the following statements / insights from Viktor Frankl:

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts, comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.“

“We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life and instead think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answers to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”

Life Works If You Work With It


The story: what do you do when workability is compromised?

I was at my parents home – in the kitchen, cooking.  Just as I had finished cooking one of my brothers came into the kitchen to get some ice cream for his daughter. He opened up the freezer and struggled to take out the tray in which the ice cream rested. After pulling at it, this way and that, he managed to pull the tray out. That is when I noticed that something was ‘wrong’.  The tray was full of water that had turned to ice.  The ice was in the tray, on the sides of the tray, and underneath the tray.

After serving ice cream to his daughter, brother started to put the tray back into the freezer. I protested that the tray needed to be emptied of the ice. So I took out the frozen stuff, washed the tray with water thus unfreezing the ice, cleaned and dried the tray. Then I refilled it with the frozen food and gave it back to my brother.

He struggled to insert the tray back into the freezer. That was not surprising as the freezer compartment was all iced up.  Clearly a defrosting process had occurred in the freezer, water had formed, and then the water had turned to ice.  And this was jamming up all of the trays.  I noticed that one of the freezer trays was broken at the front, near the handle. I assumed that this had happened when someone had tried to get the tray out, was not able to (because of the ice), and had forced the tray out.

Standing there looking at the situation, it was clear to me that the integrity and workability of the freezer had been compromised. And what needed to be done was to defrost the freezer and thus restore the integrity-workability of the freezer.

What did my brother do?  He did what we human beings do when faced with a situation that requires work-effort and we are not up for putting in that work-effort. He found an instrument and start scraping off the softer ice from the freezer so that he could slide the tray back into the freezer.  Once he had done enough to slide the tray back into the freezer he stopped.

What is the lesson, the learning here?

It occurs to me that for many of us there is at least one significant aspect of our living that does not work well. That aspect of our living is stuck-jammed-unworkable in some important manner.  Just at the freezer is at my parents house.

Given that this is the case.  You and I can choose to do what it required to restore workability to that part of our living. The equivalent of defrosting the freezer, throwing away the food that defrosted and got frozen again, clean up the mess, and restoring the integrity and thus the workability of the freezer.

Or we can do what my brother did, do the minimum: deal with the symptoms and ignore the cause – the unworkability that gives rise to the symptoms. It occurs to me that if you and I choose to take the latter course, the short cut, and shirk that which needs to be done to restore workability to our lives then we can expect continued struggle in our lives.

It occurs to me that my life works when I work with it – when I work with the grain of life. It occurs to me that where I continue to struggle with life, it is highly likely that I am creating my struggle (my suffering) by working against the grain of life.