While in India, I so appreciated the worldview that the individual is not an all-important master of the universe able to exert control over everything, an approach which I believe we in the West tend to adopt. The individual is instead one expression of vast lives that came before and vast lives that will come after. It is folly to think that there aren’t also vast circumstances at work in the human or natural environment which are beyond our control.
Contingency is therefore normal. Indians and Tibetans are very okay with last minute changes, unforeseen circumstances that present themselves and affect the course of your plans, without a great deal of anguish or sense of derailment or judgement, the way that we can be in America. I found this to be true day in and day out, on small and large matters.
Flexibility, openness to unplanned occurrences, is considered a positive adaptive quality. One can go with the flow, with what presents itself, be aware of new or better potential solutions or outcomes than the one originally imagined. Make different decisions along the way. Sometimes it was maddening for my travel plans to have to accept this reality, but I learned to relinquish.
Here in the U.S., I’m thinking now of how we race around everywhere, internally and externally. Everything is precisely scheduled, and we expect results accordingly. We make lists to efficiently cross off when and what tasks are done. We think to ourselves that all these things have to be done, and done quickly, or we won’t get to where we need to be–to be successful, to be happy, to have the American Dream. We may feel often impatient, pressured, anxious, exhausted. We barely have time to have a meal when we are not multi-tasking or distracted. We run off here and there to the next meeting, to the next after-school event, the next appointment, the next workout at the gym, etc., in ever more and more compressed, appointed uses of time. Because there are always other things we also have to do.
What do we have to do? And what for?