Serenity

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” — Lao Tzu

We are time travelers, landing from one stage of life to the next. Each leap offers a landing, each landing offers a leap. We choose who we want to be and surely try to be it. Sometimes it works out, sometimes we find our landing place isn’t what we thought it might be and we must leap again. There’s an underlying restlessness to living for the leap. There’s an underlying complacency to living with the landing.

Somewhere within us lies serenity. We believe we seek it somewhere beyond ourselves when it’s been there all along, awaiting our awareness that the world doesn’t matter a lick if we don’t reconcile ourselves with it. Acceptance seems essential to a serene soul, aware of the world and open to the changes thrown at us from all sides. We may yet be serene even as life turns us upside down at times.

There is no happiness without inner peace. There is no acceptance of a life well-lived without serenity. If we’re aware, we may just find that it was hiding there all along, just waiting for us to arrive.