Why Can’t Life Be Easier?
Did you know that as soon as the chrysalis closes on a caterpillar, it is attacked by foreign cells, or at least that’s what it thinks? These foreign cells are called imaginal cells and are the blueprint for the butterfly the caterpillar will become. But the caterpillar, feeling threatened, fights these invading cells; it does not recognize that it is being made into something more beautiful.
How often is that true for us? How many of us feel threatened by overwhelm, challenges, loss, or uncertainty? How many of us fight the interruptions and frustrations that greet us daily, wishing life wasn’t so hard? Yet, what if it is these very interruptions, losses, and challenges that are the imaginal cells of our lives? What if these are the moments that offer to grow us into something more beautiful? What if the thing we’re fighting is the seed of a great transformation?
What if the thing we’re attacking is the image of what we were meant to become?
If you, like me, wish life could be easier, perhaps we are missing the point. Perhaps the deeper question is, how do we meet life when it is anything but easy? Can we, like the caterpillar, take the opportunity to be molded and formed into something more beautiful by growing our capacity to meet life with ease? Can we build our ability to be in life, not to fight with it? Instead of wishing life were easier, can we seek to do life with ease?
Meeting life with ease doesn’t come naturally. It takes a willingness to look at ourselves with honesty. Is our body rested and nourished or is it malnourished and exhausted? Is our heart full of compassion or anxious with fear? Is our mind spacious and tranquil or filled with chaotic thoughts? Is our nervous system calm and happy or stalled in fight or flight?
How we answer these questions determines the ease with which we can meet the storms of life.
It changes the conversation from what life is doing to us. Instead, the focus is on what is the quality and integrity of the self that is meeting the twists and turns life is bringing.
When we are anchored in a self that can meet life with ease, we are more able to recognize challenges as opportunities that can mold us into something beautiful. We can meet the losses and pain of life with the soft strength of vulnerability.
To do life with ease is more than personal. It is a growing mastery that acts as a beacon of safety, tranquility, and trust in these chaotic times. It brings a deep breath to fear and a lighter step to the unsureness that currently prevails.