The Offer
I want to offer you something to consider in times of struggle, frustration, or despair. I’m not extending words of solace or comfort, but those of vulnerability. I don’t wish to sooth you, rather deepen your comfort with discomfort.
It’s a soft offer that you are free to reject if you want.
If you accept, let’s start with the premise that this, whatever you struggle with, cannot actually be fixed. This relationship, this issue, this phase of existence, is fully here and cannot be changed by you.
Sit with that.
Let’s, even if just for a moment, redirect all that energy that’s been used to desperately find the right or best solution. Set aside all that anguish over constantly falling short, not making enough progress, and instead just look at it. Really, really look at what is there. Without doing a single thing about it.
Let’s be honest about our complete incompetence. How horrifically wrong we so often get it. Acknowledge our attempts to improve or enhance lead to chaos and collapse.
Let it be ugly. Let it be awful. Let it tell its story, the one where you are not the central character.
Life is desperate for the kind of intimacy that can only come from still connection and acceptance. “See me,” it says. “Don’t change me. See me.”
Let’s fully accept our total helplessness.
Not the feeling, but the fact. A truthful reconciliation that there is nothing that can be done to change what is already here. And from that giving up, let a new relationship have space to bloom.
Let’s apprentice ourselves even to hopelessness. Setting aside our wishes and wants so that Life can regain the control it always had, and let us know new ways of being with it.
This is Life’s offer, which you are free to reject if you want.