Let It Be is not only a song by The Beatles, I also see it in this text from the Tao Te Ching:
The Master allows things to happen.
She shapes events as they come.
She steps out of the way
and lets the Tao speak for itself.
I am sometimes conflicted by the thought of letting something happen. Don’t we hear that we are in control of our own destiny? Aren’t we taught the story of the person who pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and made themselves wildly successful? The rags to riches story is available to us all if we just take control of our lives.
If I let life happen to me, am I sitting on the sidelines, destined for a life of struggle? I can’t just “let it be”. To “let it be” means that I have given up, that I no longer want to be in the game. It means that if I let life happen, I am just going to be eaten up by life. Bad things are going to happen to me because life is full of bad things.
What if I changed my thinking around “let it be”? What if I looked at it from a different angle? The angle that says I am going to prepare for life. I am going to know where I am planning to go and what I am planning to do. I am going to get myself in the best position to make those things happen and then I am going to let life speak for itself.
I recently put new tires on my snow blower. It was a process that should have taken an hour or two but it ended up taking me a week. I had done everything that I thought was necessary and then I ran into a problem with bolts that were rusted on. I tried different things and cut my knuckles and eventually I had to let the snow blower be. With no snow in the forecast I decided to wait until the following weekend to see if I could get the new tires on the machine.
I eventually got the bolts loosened, got the old tires off, and put the new tires on. The bolts came loose after I had reached out to two friends to ask for advice on stuck bolts. I remember having the thought that the good karma my friends sent to me via text message helped those bolts break free from their rusty holds. I had allowed things to happen. I shaped things by trying different solutions to free rusty bolts (WD-40, heat, candle wax). I eventually had to step out of the way and let the bolts speak for themselves
.
We recently had a snowstorm that was measured in feet and not inches. I am happy to report that the snow blower ran right through that snow on its new wheels.
