The season is turning whether you voted for it or not.
No one asked you about the first cold morning. No one checked before the light started coming back. It arrives. You wake into it. And somehow you meet it, put the heating on, find the right coat, and carry on.
You are better at change than you think. You just like to choose it first.
We do not resist change. We resist unchosen change.
I love the seasons. Cosying up in winter with a good excuse to stay in. Getting out in summer for the warmth and the air. But that is change I have already wrapped in a story I like.
The real test is the wet Tuesday when I wanted sun. The turn I did not ask for. That is where the gripping starts.
The seasons are honest teachers precisely because you cannot pick them. The Buddha saw the same thing. Everything changes, and we suffer most when we refuse to let it. We can influence things. We cannot command them. The good day ends whether we approve or not.
So we are left with something simpler. Freedom is not control. It is meeting what arrives with open hands, because it is going to arrive anyway.
Pick one small thing today that you did not choose. The weather. A plan that changed. A mood that came uninvited.
Notice the bracing. The slight push against it.
Then soften your hands. Let the thing be here without the argument. See what happens to the weight of it when you stop holding it shut.
What change are you bracing against right now that is going to arrive whether you allow it or not?
This week, I will meet what arrives with open hands.
Two from the back catalogue that sit close to this week:
Stillness in the Storms 71, What Is in Your Control and Why It Is Important to Know: on the quiet relief of knowing where your control ends. https://stillnessinthestorms.com/episode/what-is-in-your-control-and-why-it-is-important-to-know
Inner Peace Meditations 80, The Open Hand of Allowing: a short practice for loosening the grip and letting what you hold rest in an open hand. https://innerpeacemeditations.com/episode/the-open-hand-of-allowing-a-meditation-for-releasing-attachments
Living in a body that does what it wants taught me this long before I had the words for it. Some days the root pain and spasms are relentless. Other days no spasms and no pain. And it appears I do not get a say in which days that is. For years I fought the bad days as though fighting were the same as fixing. It was not. It was just two kinds of tired stacked on top of each other.
The seasons say the same thing more gently. Some days are for getting out. Some days are for staying in out of the rain. I do not have to approve of the weather for it to be the right thing to do today.
What I am slowly learning is to let go a little earlier than I want to. Not to give up. To stop bracing. The good day will end and another will come. The cold morning will pass and the light will return. None of it is mine to keep, and none of it ever needed me to be in charge.
Be gentle with yourself this week. The season is turning. You do not have to hold it still.
Much love, Steven
Thank you to everyone who has treated me to a coffee recently: Peter, Abigail, Ulysses, Cheryl, Gigi, Sandi, Rosie, Audra, Laurie, Denise, Glenn, Senga, Catherine, Simon, Adam, Dominique, Amy, Barbara, Kevin, Michael, Darren and MyHerb. And thank you to the anonymous supporters and everyone who helps keep this work advert free.
If you would like to support, listen to the podcast, or just say hello: stevenwebb.uk