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You Are Not In Control. Enjoy It.
There’s an old Taoist story about a monk who falls into a powerful river which has a huge waterfall downstream. A crowd looks on in despair, certain that the monk has no hope of survival. Yet to their surprise, they find him alive and well at the bottom of the waterfall. “How did you manage to survive?” they asked as they helped him out of the water. “What did you do?” The monk smiled, “I didn’t do anything,” he replied. “The flow of the river was much stronger than I am, so I just allowed myself to go where it took me.”
Survival is sometimes really about recognising that we don’t have control. In a crash, for example, an adult will tense their muscles, as if there were anything their efforts might do against the impact. A young child on the other hand, who hasn’t learned such foolishness yet, goes limp. It doesn’t try to exert any control over the situation and greatly increases its chances of survival.
It’s not just life and death situations where this principle holds true though. Fighting against the current of everyday life is just as counterproductive. If you think about it, it’s amazing how many things we have no control over. Even within our own bodies, our hearts beat without our permission and our nervous systems tell us that we’re cold or hungry or sleepy without the…
