Your attitude to Life is a decision you must take

 Allow Life to work on you. Life’s endeavor is to make you better, stronger, useful and a work of art.

So, as you are put through Life’s phases, you will be beaten, pushed down, defeated and discarded. When this happens your mind forces you to imagine that you have been created to suffer. That there’s a cosmic conspiracy to make your Life miserable. That everyone__and everything__is coming at you. To get you. To finish you. Hardly! Every knock, every fall, every unanswered prayer is Life’s way of testing you, challenging you and making you stronger. Swami Vivekananda could not have said it more simply: “The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong.”

So, allow Life the freedom to sculpt you. Not that you__or I__can resist it. Because even if you did, Life will still have its way. However, when you resist Life, you suffer. When you let go, when you permit free access, you are in pain, but you don’t suffer. Also, when you are not resisting, Life works faster. It sees your willingness as an opportunity to mold you freely. When you are willing you are like clay. When you resist you are hard, like stone. Breaking down stone, as you pretty well know, takes a lot more effort than molding clay.

But what’s the purpose of all this? Why do I need to be stronger or better? Can’t I not be this way__the way I am? Rational, logical questions, you may ask. But remember this: since you were given this lifetime without your asking for it, you must, with the same rationale and logic, conclude that you don’t have a choice but to allow Life to work on you the way it wants, demands and does. This acceptance is intelligent living. When you live with this acceptance__of everything that’s happening to you and around you__you will find Life meaningful, beautiful, even without it being the way you originally imagined it to be.  Your attitude to Life is a decision you must take. As an old African proverb reminds us: “You can’t direct the wind. But you can always adjust your sails!”