On giving it to the universe

I am not in control.


It took me many years of pretending that I was to be able to utter those words aloud, an admission that was both terrifying and freeing at the same time. I could not make the world a perfect place, I was powerless to change other people, and I could not slow down time. Accepting this reality made me freeze up at first, then it allowed me to breathe again. How long had I been holding my breath? How long had my racing thoughts and plans kept me from living in the moment? 


I was into my early thirties before I felt safe enough to allow meditation and mindfulness to be the way I lived each day. Anxiety always lurked just below the surface in most of my decisions despite others' reassurances of my capabilities, intelligence and strength. As a daughter, sister, wife, new mother, and full-time teacher, I carried no heavier load then most young women had done for centuries, but I fought daily to keep every ball in the air and make it look easy. I could plan the best dinners, create lesson plans each day to keep my students engaged, serve on the board of directors of the womens' shelter, deal with my then husband's sporadic employment, interact with and love my baby. What was different about my life then? I thought I was in control. I did not allow the thought of failing at any one of these things to enter my mind. Then my father died suddenly at age 55. My marriage began to decay. I needed to start over as a single mom. My inability to orchestrate life manifested itself in severe panic attacks.

Science is able to document this phenomenon very well - anxiety causes the brain to produce too much cortisol which sends the body into evolutionary survival, fight or flight mode. Your heart pounds, the blood leaves the extremities to go to the organs preparing you for battle, your mouth is dry, your breathing accelerated - yes, you're pretty sure you must be dying or losing your mind. It didn't take me too many of those experiences to realize that a) I was trying too hard to be perfect, b) that once I described this, I found out many people experienced panic attacks and that I wasn't crazy, and c) there were ways to avoid feeling that way, both via medications and by changing the way I was over-thinking and fretting about every part of my life.


Enter (or should I say re-enter?) breathing. I had learned to breathe properly many times over - to project my voice on stage when acting, speaking or singing, in pre-natal classes for labour, for relaxing before sleep. Such a simple thing was easy to forget when life seemed to be smothering you.

In all my reading and study of Buddhism were the seeds of what I had been missing as it applied to living better and with less fear, and that was the concept of impermanence. In fact it is one of the three marks of existence in Buddhist philosophy, though not an easy one for the western mind to embrace. Great thinkers from many traditions have written about the continuous state of flux that life holds, in words far more eloquent than I. It simplifies down to this: Nothing lasts forever. Nothing good or bad. Somehow, once I meditated on that belief, everything seemed a lot easier to deal with.  No human being has control over the process of growing old, of not falling sick, of dying, of decay of things that are perishable and of the passing away of that which is liable to pass, including joy and sorrow and every emotion in between.

Sure, I still worry and find myself obsessing over some things, but it is much simpler and less anxiety-provoking to release problematic people, situations and material things than it once was. All of us are continuously becoming. I try to remain mindful and in the moment, and to give it to the universe. It never was mine to control.