| I have difficulty accepting the world around me and letting anything be. I am easily distracted and noise can shatter my focus. My motto is “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with everyone and everything else.” My attempt at gaining peace is by trying to change the world and avoid my inner turmoil altogether. Even though it doesn’t work, I keep trying the same thing hoping for different results. For example, early one morning our house contained sleeping parents and children until a horn woke us up. Apparently, a neighbor was being picked up by his carpool. Instead of going to the door, the driver just sat in the car and blew his horn, again, and again. I thought to myself, ‘I want to be Gandalf (the wizard from Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings).’ I waved my hands in small circles and hummed. “What are you doing?” Carrie asked me. “I am magically causing all the tires on their car to go flat,” I said. “Oh,” she said. The horn blew twice next door. I waved my hand again. “What now?” she asked. “I’m magically causing their horn to mute,” I said. The horn blew again. I swayed my whole body from side to side. “What are you doing now?” Carrie asked. “I’m causing the car to catch on fire so that the driver will run away, and all will be quiet,” I said. “How’s that working for you?” she asked. I then began waving my hands at her. “Shhhh,” I said. I often catch myself wanting power to control the world, to end all my frustrations by magically and even prayerfully changing current reality to calm my inner rage, yet, with little results. The Let it Be practice is aids our inner peace by letting the world around us be as is. (For another way of thinking about this, try the three buckets from Growing Leaders.) https://growingleaders.com/content/uploads/2020/04/Habitude-Home-Chats-Three-Buckets.pdf |
The Moment and other books by David W. Jones are available for free at Macland Presbyterian or for a small fee on Amazon. amazon.com/author/dwjones |
