You’ve spent 30 years fighting against the current, all to say that you made it out alive. Now what? The truth is, the only thing that you have done, is spent time, pleasuring pain, and accompanying misery. You still ended up with the same outcome. The same product.
Going against the current vs going with the tide: Going with the tide, sometimes takes you to a safe place until the storm subsides and the rocky waters, become calm again; by which it’s safe to swim back to shore. Look at it like this: It takes as much time, but with less pain, less fighting, less strain, stress, and suffering, to roll with the tide. You get here, or there…wherever you are setting your sites on, and at the same time- because the truth is, you don’t arrive anywhere before it’s time to arrive. You can choose to fight that water, until it takes you under. Or, you can choose to let the natural flow of the water push you into a direction with the current.
Now if you choose to fight it- you choose to fight it- but why would you give up the peace? There is peace in knowing that there is a safe place, in the valley, where you can rest and be assured that the wait time is very necessary. It has nothing to do with giving up and giving in. It has everything to do with growing wise enough to know, that the time to rest is now. Or that the time to move, will be later. Or that the time to jump was then. Or that the time to go full speed ahead, will come. While fighting the flow, may make you stronger, in that you’d build muscle and tolerance… going with the flow, sometimes makes you wiser. In that, you find serenity.
Think about it- is your life better now because of the fight you put up- or are the results of your life the same now, as when you began your fight- except that you don’t have to fight anymore? What was it and what is it all worth to you? Do you just want the bragging rights? But why? And what does that teach you or anyone else that you hope to inspire? Don’t get me wrong, if I were talking about the need to “push through” it would be a different story. Because those times are also very real. But “pushing through” could also be conjuring up the strength to push through something you don’t want to do, rather than what you do want to do.
What does that mean to you? To me, it means- my life is not better now because of all that I took on. The results of that is the same. I’m in a better place because it’s time to be in a better place- with those same results. So, the vision that I have now, tells me that in this same amount of time, I would have been here, but it was what I chose to do in the meantime that would determine if I would suffer and struggle through the wait for the water to calm. Or if I would peacefully drift out to sea, until the water became calm again.
If someone were to tell you in the beginning, that no matter what fight that you put up, against the raging waters-the result would be the same; would you fight? What has your fight been for? Keep in mind, this is not about perseverance and “going after something you want” or being strong enough to get through it. It’s not about, never quitting and giving up. It’s about being wiser now- and knowing that, “sometimes, you have to lose to win.”
When I started saying, I don’t care about the result, because I know that either way, I will be positioned exactly where I need to be… I began to become wiser. When I became wiser, I found out a better way to deal with certain circumstance. In short, and applicable to one aspect of my life, I learned how I can give someone the rope to hang themselves… if I just go with the natural flow; rather than fighting and resisting the change. I realized that, in accepting an outcome of a situation, (which may vary from person to person) I was winning. That for me, and for anyone else, translate to closure.
I remember sitting on the stand in my court case and listening to my child’s father lie on me in some of the worse ways. I felt so defeated- but calm at the same time and I truly couldn’t understand how I could be that calm. It was because I’d already said that I don’t care about the result, I just need the result so that I can have closure. It was so that I would have a new set of perspectives, on where to take it from here. I needed something to be solid. Once it was, I began to come back to the shore. Related Article
I went with the flow. I allowed opposing counsel to lie about petitions I’d filed that did not include allegations I was making. I allowed opposing counsel fabricate stories, to fabricate documents, to falsify stories and accusations which he knew weren’t true. I allowed the child’s father to continue. When I realized that my attorney was allowing it too, I literally exhaled. Not because I was happy about the turn of events- but because I was wise enough to know that if a judge was allowing all of this to occur and an Amicus was allowing all of this to occur, and my child’s father was allowing all of this to occur- it was time for me to try something new. That was to flow… and allow it to unfold in a way that I would have never been able to, had I continued to fight the current.
That was to let all of them go, so that I could finally get out of the way of God. I think at one point I was so worried about what people would think- because they’d surely be saying something like “Yeah, God fixed her.” But then I realized that I shouldn’t be worried about that at all- because if I’m in the presence of people who would think that god operates in lies; then they don’t realize what I know. To me, that meant that they thought that it was gods will for them to win- even though it was by the lies they told. That’s not where GOD came in. But why would I waste time, in trying to make that point, while I am in rocky waters, when I can allow the point to make itself, when I came out of the water?
Application: If you are going through, keep going. Relax, Breath… You got this!
Article: As seen on SheSavvy.com
Niedria Kenny, Influential Scribbler 