The Impossiblity of Seclusion and the Flow of Possibility

I was determined to have at least 7 days of complete exile and forced seclusion in order to work on my current writing project. However, if any of you followed along on Twitter, you know that it turned out to be an impossibility. I refuse to say failure because it was not for lack of trying and it wasn’t that I didn’t write, I just could not keep my commitment to seclusion and I have spent the past few days trying to understand why?

It boils down to this. You have to learn to go with the flow, even when you think the flow is going against you. We may not see our lives in terms of nature, but it is just that. You can’t will a river to flow north when it is already flowing south and the same holds true with our daily lives. There are forces being exacted upon us at all times. Now, I don’t mean crazy evil movie-type forces that appear out of nowhere to destroy us. I mean the forces of just daily living, the life force of people around us, and the moments of change and perception that happen along our path that we can’t ignore. They don’t have to be negative things. They only become negative if we choose to label them as such.

I have realized that it is OK to swim along in the direction that the river is taking me. It’s all about perception. If we perceive of the river as a true resource and a life giver, then we can be secure in our ability to flow along without resistance. The moment we see the river as the flood of destruction, then in that moment we drown in our inability to open ourselves up to whatever possibility may reveal itself along the river’s edge as the current takes us farther down stream than we planned.

So in the future when I make plans, I will always make room for my plans to change. Like Picasso said, we shouldn’t put things into stone, we should leave lots of room for ambiguity.

 

You have to have an idea of what you are going to do,

but it should be a vague idea. 

~Pablo Picasso