I want to share with you some interesting thoughts from one of my favorite writers!
David Richo wrote the best book I’ve ever read on being with others called: How to be an adult in relationships. Now he’s written: The five things you cannot change…and the happiness we find by embracing them.
This book starts from the guiding premise that we control very little of what happens to us in life. One of our major difficulties is discovering how “reality refuses to bow to our commands…all our lives include unexpected twists, unwanted endings, and challenges of every puzzle kind.”
David Richo works as a psychotherapist and has found the same five struggles arise again and again with his clients. These he calls the five unavoidable givens:
- Everything changes and ends.
- Things do not always go according to plan.
- Life is not always fair.
- Pain is part of life.
- People are not loving and loyal all the time.
Each of these givens suggest questions about our destiny:
“Are we here to get our way or to dance with the flow of life? Are we here to make sure everything goes according to our plans or to trust the surprises and synchronicities that lead us to new vistas? Are we here to make sure we get a fair deal or are we here to be upright and loving? Are we here to avoid pain or to deal with it, grow from it, and learn to be compassionate through it? Are we here to be loyally loved by everyone or to love with all our might?”
The idea that struck me the strongest in his introduction was the most important given of all: Anything can happen to anyone of us at anytime. Most of us spend a lifetime dancing around this most obvious truth. We imagine that very good or very bad luck is supposed to happen to other people but never to us.
But when we embrace the fact that anything can happen to us at anytime, we begin to let go of our ego’s privileged view of itself as entitled to special treatment, that some rescuer will come through just for us and grant us exemption from life’s hard knocks.
If we finally accept that we are the same as everyone else in these basic uncertainties, we become humble and feel a consoling sense of belonging, no matter how difficult life may become.
I think David’s ideas have everything to do with midlife crisis. For many of us this crisis in the middle of life is our opportunity to feel human and fallible and just like everyone else. Circumstances change, life becomes confusing, and we must finally accept how out of control our life can be at times, and how fundamentally unsuperior we are in this world of troubled souls.
When I consider the truth: “Things don’t always go according to plan,” I see that my life would be much worse if they had! I was married to the wrong man and pursuing a career I no longer enjoyed. If things had gone according to plan, I would not have gotten a divorce, lost my job, and consequently found a life so much more suited to my needs and dreams.
I can highly recommend this thought-provoking book!
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Sounds like my kind of read.
Life isn’t about what the world brings to me, Life is about what I bring to the world.
Maybe that’s why I prefer sailing to motor boating!
So how did all those motorcycles get in there?!!
Happy New Year!!!!!!
Brad
NICE. I love books like this. Thanks for the recommendation!
EXACTLY! Very wise words. I think coming to terms with those principles is what being happy is all about. Even when things are crazy and scary, there are profound things to be learned, boundaries to be pushed. My mantra for 2009 is: Lean into the scary. That is how we grow and become bigger than we are. And, how we find ourselves someplace better than we could have imagined for ourself.
It can be challenging to look at and accept these things, but once we get to the other side … such freedom, like emerging from a small and stuffy room into the fresh air and open sky. What an incredible relief.