Swing with me

I imagine it like a ball hanging from a string.  You are born, someone pulls it back, and you start to swing. It's perpetual motion, this swing, it won't stop until your last breath. You might like it to just stop there in the middle or perhaps somewhere exciting at the top, but it won't.. It doesn't stop. That's the nature of this life.

Some people are lucky enough to have a small swing. Not much disturbs them. Maybe they're not that curious about anything outside their swing though. They like things as they are. A fine way to be.

Some people swing wildly all over the place. They have a hard time making heads or tails of their life. Their thoughts and emotions drag them all over; sometimes to places they don't want to go, and sometimes to places so high that they can't seem to get down. They are often trying desperately to slow down this crazy ride or even just find a way to get off, any way they can.

Most people fall somewhere in between those two. But all of us swing.

Some of the driving motion of the swing is the momentum of the parts of our daily life. The hunger to fullness swing. The rested to tired swing. The nature of the feelings themselves also. What goes up must come down, and then back up again. Sometimes we take drugs that we think will help us better manage the swing, but we forget that what goes up must come down (as high as it goes up, so as low it must go) and we are worse off then before.

To swing is our nature. The trouble is, we try to control it. We think, "things should not be this way"  or  "I really want things to be like this forever". We try desperately to push away on one end and hold on tight and don't let go at the other. These ideas of how things should be, and our preferences and addictions throw our natural swing into a big mess.

To top it off, we try and control the swings of the people next to us (and they try to control our swing). After all, their swings affect our swings too. We lock ourselves into crazy patterns that we do not want and tie ourselves up in horrible knots just trying to make things right.

You know another great way to describe an up and down swing like that? A wave. So many things in our universe are described as waves. Up and down we go. Add in the wind and the rain and the rocks to crash against and you have quite a storm.

It feels very much out of our control, and it is. It feels very scary, but don't panic or flail. That's a good way to drown. First, remember that you can float. If you relax you can rest on top of the waves. If you pay attention and learn the feel of the waves you might even be able to stand up and ride them. It's the biggest of the breakers that are the best for surfing.