Way back in February I wrote a very long piece over several days explaining some of my views on what was happening out there in the real world. It was a very negative piece, because that's how I was feeling, and even as I was writing I knew that I probably wouldn't be posting, because what good would it do? Plus, I knew even as I was writing that the point of the piece wasn't about the negatives, the point was my friend's response to it all: he told me that what is going to happen, will happen, and we cannot know ahead of time how it will be. "What I do know," he continued, "is that we cannot wait for it to happen. And in the meantime, all we can do is try to live."
Let me repeat that: In the meantime, all we can do is try to live.
That is the most hope-inspiring, life-affirming thing that I have heard in a long time. It left me thinking about what it means, that injunction to "try to live".
And then…stuff continued to happen…the year continued to roll by…I continued to insist on focussing on ‘the good stuff’; a number of my friends continued to suffer, to self-harm, to wallow; family members got ill, not all survived; there were breaks of light in the darkness: holidays,
gatherings, laughter, teachings, poetry readings, outside writing, a long hot summer that was both glorious and worrying…what was going to happen, happened. And I forgot.
I forgot the bit about trying to live. When someone I care about very much talks about the valley of the shadow of death that they are camped out in, I lose sight of that wisdom. I get caught up in shadows of their conjuring that have nothing to do with my reality.
I am no expert on chaos theory or quantum physics. I have the vaguest of notions about how potentiality waves collapse into present moments, but I do know that there is no such thing as “the” reality. And I am sick and tired of being told that there is. I am angered and depressed when I hear the vehement assertion that THAT’s the reality.
Because, NO, it isn’t.
It might be their reality. It might be reality for many people. But it is not my reality. Reality is perception. The real world that we live in, is the one that we choose to live in. We have the power and capability to change it, and we do that from our self outwards. We do it from where we are, one step at a time. We choose our own reality by how we decide to ‘be’ in the world and by how we decide to allow the ‘world’ to be in and around us.
There are no easy solutions to the big problems, but there are to the little problems, and if we start with those, the big ones will diminish.
Eventually, I allowed the doom and gloom to overwhelm me. That’s not a pretty sight. And it’s pretty embarrassing from this side of the fence. I end up with apologies to make and concerns that some relationships may not survive my home-truth telling.
But my shame-storm passes and clarity returns. I realise that I can walk out of that shadowed valley. I can clamber up the mountain passes. Or I can swim down its river. I don’t need to camp out in the darkness and wait for whatever is coming. I can, in the meantime, try to live.
So what does it mean, “to try to live”?
For me, it means not to simply exist, not to get by, not to be a success, have a career, be wealthy, raise a family, become famous, run or ruin a country – simply: try to live. Be truly alive. Live a life of meaning, whatever that looks like for you. That might well include becoming a movie star, or raising children to be free-thinking adults, or travelling the world, or becoming president of a company or a country – but in amongst all of that: try to live, to be alive, to appreciate what a gift it is just to feel the breath coming in and going out, what a beautiful planet we live on, how amazingly supportive our inter-personal relationships can be if we allow them to, what an incredibly gift curiosity is, how comforting a garden can be, how much diversity matters in plants and animals and humans, and how LITTLE we really need to impact the planet in order to have all of this.
I don't claim any credentials on this score. I have my good stuff and my bad stuff like most people.
But I love the notion that I don't need to fix the whole world's bad stuff. I just need to "try to live" a meaningful life on my own terms. Do what I can, with what I have, where I am.
I believe that our life has meaning when we know what our values are, and we align our actions and behaviours with them.
So then, having come back to this tiny piece of wisdom, I emptied my gratitude box and read over all the things that had meant something to me in the moment during the past year.
Then I took down my vision board, cleared space on it, and re-made it.
And I removed the list of “commitments” that I have failed to hold myself to this year, and came up with a much simpler statement of priorities.
In essence: I revisited my values and my vision for aligning my life with them. This is my first next step in trying to live in the world as I find it now. This is where I start to re-create my reality.
And I am calmer, and re-centred, as a result.
Full disclosure: another friend says that "to try" is "to fail with honour". He says, “don't try, do!” You all know the Yoda quote. I disagree. I think that to try is to maybe fail with the honour that comes with having made the attempt, but better that than not trying or failing with dishonour.
Trying is what takes us from "not doing" to "doing". Being told 'get it right or don't bother' is really very bad advice. Do try. Trying is all there is, in the beginning.
Self-belief needs evidence. Try. Fail. Try again, harder or smarter or differently. Fail again, fail better, fail fast, but don't be afraid to fail. And don't be afraid to try. That's how we find the closed roads. That's how we find the finite limits of our capability, and how we find the ones which are NOT as fixed and finite as we might have thought them. Try. Push. Imagine. Tweak. Re-engineer. Practice. Keep trying. And eventually progress. From progress, keep pushing, imagining, tweaking and then who knows?
You determine what success looks like. For you, it may be a place you arrive at. For me success is progress, and the knowledge that I'm ready to try to take the next step.
Yoda was so wrong when he said there is no try. Try is all there is.
So yes, try to live and you never know, you might wake up one day and realise just how fully ALIVE you have become.
