On The Path

I’ve been feel­ing serene late­ly.

Serenity has­n’t been some­thing that lasts for me. It comes and goes in cycles. Eventually, I fall off the path, because anger, impa­tience, love, over-ana­lyz­ing, are all habits of mine. Habits that resur­face when I let my guard down.

The goal now is to keep the seren­i­ty going. The hard­est part is the fact that I have to be con­scious in my attempt. It’s a con­stant work in progress, and some­thing I can’t stop work­ing on, lest I fall into the trap of my old self again. I’m hop­ing that even­tu­al­ly, I’ll be able to make this into a good habit, and this peace will come on its own.

So often, it’s hope that gets me through. But I have no need of hope, or clo­sure, or jus­tice any­more. None of that mat­ters. Life is what it is. I’m start­ing to let go of every­thing I used to hold dear.

9 comments

  1. I think you hit the nail by the head when you say “I have no need of hope, or clo­sure, or jus­tice any­more. None of that mat­ters. Life is what it is.”

    I don’t under­stand your say­ing “I’m start­ing to let go of every­thing I used to hold dear.” When you’re on the path of seren­i­ty, should­n’t you be let­ting go of what­ev­er that’s in your way? What’s so dear about them?

    • I nev­er used to think of these things as being in the way of seren­i­ty. I used to hold loy­al­ty dear, and believe strong­ly in jus­tice. Perhaps this could be con­sid­ered Confucian. For exam­ple, I com­plete­ly under­stand the impor­tance of tra­di­tion, even though I did­n’t believe in it.

      There’s seren­i­ty to be found in both Taoism and Confucianism. What works for me, how­ev­er, is a dif­fer­ent sto­ry, and I’m still learn­ing as I go along.

  2. I’m start­ing to let go of every­thing I used to hold dear.”

    In a good way? I could see it being good if the rigid­i­ty of what you hold dear was hold­ing you back in some ways. But the tone of it sounds melan­choly.

    • It’s in a good way, yes. But at the same time, there is that melan­choly aspect to it, because I feel like I’m los­ing a bit of myself. I used to pride myself on quixot­ic ideas, and I think that was a part of me. Now I’m chang­ing. Even though I know that pride is use­less, and that we should shed old parts of our­selves like skin, I still feel like it’s the result of bad expe­ri­ences that have made me more cyn­i­cal. And I don’t like that.

  3. @Jeff: How would your pov change if you thought “Life is what I make of it” (more of a par­tic­i­pant pov).

    @Joe and Tiana: To me, your com­ments were as equal­ly pro­found as Tyler Durden’s phi­los­o­phy — “It’s only after we’ve lost every­thing that we’re free to do any­thing.”

    • There’s def­i­nite­ly a bal­ance as to what one can do and what is out of one’s con­trol, because I don’t believe it’s one way or the either. I’ve expe­ri­enced both ends of that spec­trum in the last year. Right now, I’m just try­ing to fig­ure out a mid­dle ground.

  4. The last sen­tence sounds both con­tent and defeat­ed at the same time. Is it pos­si­ble?

    I agree with Tiana, per­haps every­thing in which you placed val­ue held you back too tight­ly them­selves, and in the act of let­ting go, you open your­self to bet­ter things; open and vul­ner­a­ble, the many good things can find you that might not have found you before.

    Contentment is under­stand­ing and accep­tance and love of what hap­pens to you in the present, with­out try­ing to grap­ple with the real­i­ty of what it is. It is grat­i­tude for what occurs as it occurs.

    • There’s def­i­nite­ly both hope and sad­ness when let­ting things go. You’re absolute­ly right when you say, “Contentment is under­stand­ing and accep­tance and love of what hap­pens to you in the present, with­out try­ing to grap­ple with the real­i­ty of what it is.” That pret­ty much sums up my life right now.

Leave a Reply to Jeff Cancel reply