436. Moving With Possibility

A sudden and unexpected change in our circumstances can leave us feeling distressed. We thought we knew what our lives would be and we made plans on that basis, but now everything is uncertain. We became comfortable in our routines and habits, only to find that we are now overwhelmed by anxiety and stress.

Without our knowledge, we formed a deep attachment to beliefs about the status quo. We took its regularity for granted, and it now feels like a promise has been broken. We were promised consistency but we received chaos instead. Deep down, we might have known nothing was ever certain, but we never expected to face a change of this magnitude.

Attachment is so nefarious precisely because it easily goes unnoticed. We quietly become accustomed to a certain way of life and we fail to realize we are also becoming more rigid and resistant to movement. But the world will move and it will sometimes do so without warning. To be forced to move again after a long period of dormancy is necessarily shocking and suffering immediately follows — in this case, as anxiety and stress.

The only way we could have been prepared for this surprise is if we had never stopped moving in the first place. This doesn’t mean that our lives need to be more chaotic, but only that we need to be flexible and open to a wide range of possibilities. Achieving this is not as straightforward as it might seem. We cannot merely consider the idea that something might change, we also have to allow ourselves to explore fully how it would practically affect us.

Awareness is always profoundly practical. It is developed not through detached theoretical considerations, but through the felt experience (both real and virtual) of possibility. To release ourselves from attachment to our existing situation, we must allow ourselves to move continuously through the space of possibilities. By doing so, we help to ensure that freedom from suffering is not narrowly constrained to particular circumstances, but broad enough to create joy in all possible worlds.