One of the challenges of being young was thinking that we should know everything about the world but intuitively feeling that we are abjectly unprepared for it. Then come decades of trying to BE prepared for it and never getting to the place where it would feel safe and known. Finally, in short but steadily more sustained bursts, comes the warm realisation that this place of not-knowing is where we are meant to be all this time.
I think it was Jack Kornfield who described the journey as a spiral - we move in and out of chaos and peace, but if we keep at it, we gradually move towards the centre of all things. This carnival tea-cup ride can be terrifying. But it's good to remember that if we hold on for the whole ride, we never get flung into outer darkness. We also discover that if we steel ourselves in suffering, the ride becomes more agonising. If instead we just let ourselves be thrown with the forces and go deep into the experience of pain, terror, joy and laughter, we do start to find a peace in the swirling.
In our perpetual struggle to find happiness, we have to remember that it is as fleeting as the turn of the carnival tea-cup. But the unlimited joy that is within us like the cushioned organs in our bodies, is always there - we are more than the forces around us, we can surmount them. And we can tap into this limitless peace - we just close our eyes and breathe. It always works.
We knew this when we were young, enjoying the thrill of the ride, but we somehow forgot. Or perhaps the voices around us telling us to hurry up and outgrow inner knowing were too loud. We should have been told different, we need to tell our young people different - "you are already just fine as you are, you will get thrown by the forces of the world, but don't ever forget that your okay-ness in already intact. This state of not-knowing is normal, you are safe."
