On staying with what’s here when we really don’t want to
When I started writing this, I didn’t really want to write.
It took a lot just to sit down and begin, so it already felt like a small success just to get the first sentence out.
Some of the best lines come when you don’t want to write at all, and I think that’s true of almost anything — some of the most surprising experiences arrive when we’re not looking for them.
The alternative to doing is to stay — to not do the thing that takes you away.
But how do we stay?
Often it feels pointless, like there’s nowhere to go and nothing to change.
Like now: I don’t want to write because I’m not comfortable with the state I’m in.
It’s hard to stay with what’s here.
But something in me says: what if you could?
What if you could stay with this, exactly as it is?
What if even this was okay — that you could let it in,
and the world would still be the same?
What if nothing fell apart, and the ground beneath you grew even firmer still?
There has to be some real, felt benefit to letting go, otherwise we won’t do it.
It’s easy to say “stay with what’s bothering you,”
but quite another thing to actually do it.
Without guidance, we default to coping — trying to fix, avoid, or analyse.
But what if the task isn’t to figure it out,
but to make space for a different kind of intelligence?
Not one that originates in the mind,
but in the deeper self —
the one that knows how to guide us beyond the polarity of fear and desire.
That intelligence is its own medicine.
It carries a quiet sense that things are somehow in their right place,
even when the personality is screaming otherwise.
I once saw an image in a card deck of a person floating down a river on their back,
completely at ease in the current.
The card’s message was simple: Go with the flow.
To trust something beyond our thinking intelligence.
That life force can be terrifying to our parts,
because it isn’t predictable.
It moves where it wants, and it will take us in new directions.
When I was in my twenties, a teacher of metaphysics once said to me,
“Ryan, you’re afraid of the ground floor.”
He was right.
I was clinging to the banks of the river for dear life —
trying to control what couldn’t be controlled.
We forget there’s a kind of mystery at work
that can’t operate while we’re clutching the sides.
It asks for a leap of faith —
not in a naïve way,
but in the way of someone who’s gatvol (Afrikaans for “more than enough”)
of pushing upstream.
Beyond all the unfairness, the resentment, and the striving,
there comes a moment where we say:
Alright life, do with me what you will.
That’s not giving up —
that’s surrendering into participation.
The river doesn’t always turn your life upside down.
Sometimes it just changes how you show up.
It helps you break small patterns —
the ways you withhold care from yourself,
or move too fast to notice what’s already trying to happen.
This life energy is responsive to the moment.
It doesn’t argue with what life is presenting.
Like water, it finds its way —
not through effort, but through surrender.
It lives in the present,
unbound by the past, yet informed by its lessons.
That force is powerful and, yes, scary — because it’s ours.
Many of us were taught not to trust it.
But what if the storm you imagine would never come?
It’s like opening a tap.
You don’t have to open it all at once.
Just enough to let life in —
and give yourself a chance to acclimatise.
It can feel overwhelming to open too fast,
so we learn to sense how much we can handle.
Opening the tap is the medicine.
Because as frightening as it can be,
it also feels deeply good to be connected again.
It’s a twofold process.
Let life in.
Work with the parts that can’t or won’t.
Those parts are usually the ones most longing to trust again —
to believe that something good is possible.
A question I find helpful is:
What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
That thing you really want to do, but are afraid to —
that’s probably the thing you should.
🌿
Maybe this week, notice where you’re still trying to push the river.
What would it mean to soften, even a little —
to stay with what’s here,
and to trust that life, in its own way, knows exactly where to go?
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