Last night I watched ‘Arrival’, a Hollywood blockbuster full of aliens, cliches and cloying messages.
At one point in the movie the question was brought up of, what If you knew how events would unfold. If you were able to know the future and see the end result of your actions and decisions, would you change anything?
I paused for a moment to reflect and, with surprising immediacy and rotundity, said NO. When I finished watching the film I fell asleep and that was that.
However this morning I’ve understood the reason I refuse to change even one iota of my biography. If I were to extract the slightest event, my life would be incomplete, mutilated, partial.
My life is as it is because only in this way does it make sense. I can not add nor remove anything to this perfect puzzle. Every event, every encounter, every exchange, is part of my journey and is manifesting an invisible order, serving an unknown purpose, expressing a higher will. This speaks of a meaning.
Existence unfolds before my eyes while I participate in it. I am the audience and the actor.
If I understand this truth I can live at ease, without tension, simply accepting the flow of events, being in harmony with the natural order of existence expressed moment by moment.
The only way to do this is to live in the present. In the here and now, I respond the best I can, without effort and without fear, to what is unfolding before me. I do not need to anticipate events when I recognize that I do not have the capacity to control them. I have no need to go back to the past, to repent or to reproach anything to others because I am aware that every experience is necessary and that every moment is perfect.
This excerpt from the Tao Te Ching reveals to us this magical paradox of existence:
Things arise and she lets them come;
Things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn’t possess,
acts but doesn’t expect.