Life is not chase-able.
I will never catch it. I can’t speed my way to anything I want in life.
Life has its own pace and everything is delivered right on time.
So when I chase something in life, like a career or a relationship or a possession, what I’m chasing seems to retreat away from me.
Not because life is rejecting my advances, but because it is unaffected by them.
Life has perfect timing.
And life will not let me degrade its perfection with my limited ideas about what should happen and when.
Life simply waits until it’s time and then bestows its gifts exactly when and how they should be given (which may be the gift of getting something and it may be the gift of being spared something).
“But I’ve chased things and attained them!”
Yes, that’s true.
And can I be sure that the chasing was necessary?
If I’m meant to have something, is it possible not to get it? If I’m meant to be spared something, is it possible not to be spared? Does it really matter what kind of emotional effort I put in?
I find that chasing things in my life - exerting the effort of willing things to happen that are not happening - is a recipe for suffering. Sometimes the suffering is dark and painful, sometimes it’s light and manageable, but it’s suffering nonetheless.
If I want to suffer, I certainly can. But…
Is it possible that all that has ever been necessary for me to attain what is right for me is to just be what I am and do what I do and let the way of it fall right into place?
When I finally suffer enough, when I run out of capacity to endure the pain of chasing things I can never seem to attain, when I completely surrender my ambition in the interest of my own peace, when I give up on the whole idea of ever being anything other than what I am right here and right now, life has the opportunity to show me what it is always doing on my behalf.
And I am blown away by all the gifts life is bestowing on me - all the connections, relationships, opportunities, growth, achievements and successes I experience without engaging in any effort to bring them about any sooner than they will.
I see that all I’m called to do is give myself the freedom to live in simple, playful, authentic, non-striving engagement with the gift of what IS.
And to witness, with awestruck fascination, what I am given and what I am spared without any effort to hurry things along.