All is Well

What if everything is really, really OK? What if, as the mystics have taught, all is well, all has always been well and it always will be? Have you ever let yourself believe this – to really believe this?

From an early age we are conditioned to be cautious, be careful, not to screw it up (as children there are a seemingly infinite number and variety of ways to ruin our lives, to have some sin forever stain our “permanent record”). As childhood moves into adolescence our academic progress takes on a sudden new earnestness and with each grade of “C” or lower a few more colleges are stricken from our imagined future.

By our 20s the worthwhile mates are being gobbled up, our 30s bring pressure to seize the right professional opportunities, by 40 doors of all kinds are closing, by 50 cholesterol counts must be managed and by 60 you’d damned well better be financially prepared for retirement because there’s a 30-something with an eye on your corner office.

Death, of course, is the greatest of biological clocks, with each tick a subtle reminder that “time is wasting” if we are to “make something of our lives.” At 3 a.m. the 20-year-old asks, “What am I going to do with my life?” while across town at that same hour the 70-year-old asks, “What happened to my life?” and neither comes away with a satisfactory answer. Were they to meet the 70-year-old would counsel, “What do you have to worry about, you have your whole life ahead of you?” to which the 20-year-old would reply, “At least you made it through. Look how many 3 a.m.s still await me!”

Some of us compensate for this pressure to “do” something by doing quite a lot. We build companies or birth six kids or win Oscars and climb mountains. But at some point we have to set the Oscar aside and come down from the mountain. For lack of purpose (e.g. “something to do”) the men die shortly after retirement and the women feel as empty as the nest the children have abandoned and in the wee hours a chorus of prayers rise toward the rooftops, “My life is passing me by! What am I to DO?”

For some, however, the answer is to “do” less. They’re breathing more, expecting less, and recognizing that if the race ends the same for everyone there really isn’t much point to the running. For me the answer is simple: trust that all is well, always has been, always will be. That despite all that conditioning to the contrary, I can’t screw it up.