‘life is a series of surprises which we mostly resist’

it’s a difficult thing to embrace everything that comes our way.

So is the case when speaking of uncertainty and change, especially un-welcome change. But isn’t this after all what builds our character to the very fullest; to not resist, and succumb, and be vulnerable and be there, fully immersed.

I think so.

But this doesn’t make it easy.

Unwelcome change is the worst.

Just as you get into your groove, just as you feel things are headed down the right path and your ship is finally sailing the course it’s suppose to…BOOM, you’re hit by a fucking tidal wave.

Maybe these unwelcome changes are character building surprises that feed all the hungry parts of our minds and souls that have been starving for some time now. 

The tidal wave is your awakening.

Either that, or it will drown you.

I can think of things in my life that I resisted, and looking back at them, I wish I had done the opposite.

And I know why I resisted. I resisted because it would just be too uncomfortable and too unnatural to not resist. We just do the best we can to keep going down the road we’re on because it must be the right road and we’re fixated on a bigger picture.

If you think about it, we fixate on a picture that in essence controls our behaviors to all of the exciting/scary things that may come our way. We fixate because that image that we constructed years ago when choosing our college majors, must be the picture that is the right one, because you know, you know exactly what and who you want to be straight out of high school.

Thinking back, I’m more uncomfortable that I resisted.

Anne Lamott: ‘we live stitch by stitch, when we’re lucky. If you fixate on the big picture, the whole shebang, the overview,  you miss the stitching.’

Day by day.

Stitch by stitch.

You know those people you think have it all figured out have nothing more figured out than you because tomorrow is just as unpredictable for them as it is for you.

What separates all of us is how we choose to ride the waves of surprise that come along.

Some of us, the majority of us, will choose to miss a whole stitch, more often than not.

I think we rob ourselves all of our lives.

I think that’s why a big select of us have such a phobia of commitment; that commitment will ultimately be the reason to resist surprise and fun and thus, will ultimately, make life mundane.

Commitment is not a lack of freedom.

Commitment should not be a lack of freedom.

We’re all stumbling through this thing we call life.

“Cheat on the chaotic stumbling-about, and you’ve robbed yourself of the raw stuff that feeds the imagination.”

Denis Shekerjian

And maybe that’s why everything gets boring and mundane and routine like and life loses the luster it once had. 

Life is a series of surprises.

And ultimately, spontaneity, uncertainty, and the unknown is what we live for.

So live.