One relational stance I keep returning to is a concept I call “collaborating with reality”.
It’s definitely not my default, but I continuously practice bringing myself back to it.
And for good reason:
If we reject reality (or a part of it), if we demand this moment to be different, we make it impossible to collaborate with.
And if we want the next moment to be different, we’re going to have to find a way to do that from within the current one.
To create the future, collaboration with the present is a requirement.
You can wish for things to be different. To wake up tomorrow with all your desires delivered on your doorstep.
Or you can wish for the willingness to be with things as they are.
And collaborate with reality in its continuous development. Which wish do you think is most likely to be granted?
If we want to collaborate with reality, the first step is to welcome it.
After all, it’s hard to dance with someone (or something) if you pretend they’re not in the room.
So what is in the room with you? You can ask yourself:
What’s really here right now?
How am I being?
What’s my capacity?
What sorts of feelings, sensations and stories are making their way through me?
What’s the space I find myself in? Who else is here and how are they behaving?
Can I welcome all of that as it is?
Because no matter how you twist it, those are the things you’ll have to work with.
And that of course, includes any parts of reality that make it hard to do so in the first place. Any feelings of resistance, unwillingness or judgment are just as much part of the same reality they’re resisting.
If we resist our resistance we have twice as much of it.
If we reject the part of us that rejects reality we are, in fact, acting from it.
There is no escaping this, that’s the joke of it, reality will be as it is, patiently waiting till we’re ready to collaborate with it. To accept that we are as much an effect as a cause of it.
The main thing I invite you to observe here is thoughts that go somewhat like this:
“If only this or that external thing were gone, I could be __ right now.”
For, example, for me these thoughts often go something like “If only I had more hours in the day.” and as an ignorant teenager, my thoughts used to say “If only society wasn’t so stupid.”
These are neither helpful, nor enjoyable thoughts to have.
And that’s exactly because they disempower us, by demanding reality be different.
Now again, the move here is not necessarily to say “Shoo, bad thought, go away!”, but to welcome the thought as something you share this moment with.
And yes, that applies to the thought “Shoo, bad thought, go away!”, too, there is no end to this.
The point is, to collaborate with reality we must welcome it, and to welcome it we must first welcome the person doing the welcoming, and whatever state they find themselves in.
If you want to change, the person who has to do the changing is your present self. Not some idealized version of you which you force yourself to live up to. You wouldn’t get frustrated with your dog because it doesn’t fly, would you?
So why create frustration with yourself for not having the habits, traits or capabilities you don’t have yet?
Look at what you do have.
Then see how you can use that to initiate or propose the creation of what you want next.
And see which response you get from your environment.
From there, you greet that environment with the same attitude.
Any change you want to make is made where you currently find yourself. Not where you wish you were.
When you see reality as it is, you empower yourself to build a life in it.
When you see yourself as you are, you empower yourself to change.
Conversely, when you misrepresent yourself, you disempower others from relating to you (or offering help).
And when your beliefs don’t match reality, you can’t move in it.
Welcome what is here fully, and it becomes the play-doh from which to create the next moment.
Because it’s through this process that life continues to exist.
Life isn’t just a thing that happens to you, it’s inviting you into it.
It’s throwing all sorts of curveballs with a smile, waiting for your reaction to shift from a “But, no… be different!” to a “Yes, and…how about we try this next?”
Because life won’t listen to your butts or your nose.
Just like I won’t listen to anyone asking me to correct the typos in the previous sentence.
It will keep happening regardless, but it does allow you to participate.
It allows you to add more life to the life already here. It allows you to say: “Yes, life …and now I do this. What are you going to do next?””
When you start to see life as an endless stream of happenings which you can participate in and play with, something changes.
Everything becomes more fun and beautiful. Including the parts that feel painful.
The pain doesn’t disappear, but becomes part of the playful tapestry.
It all goes back to that first step of welcoming.
When you tell life to be different, you are rejecting the only thing that exists.
But no matter how hard we reject it, it continues to be. It’s only ourselves that we take out of it.
It’s like playing basketball but complaining that the ball should bounce differently.
It won’t.
When life starts to feel like a problem, the best move is going towards it.
To be with the ball it passed you. To study its movements. And learn to move with it.
Because no amount of cursing the ball is going to make it move in your favor.
This applies to anything that is happening around you, within you, or between you and someone else.
In conflict, for example we must collaborate with reality too.
We can complain that the other person should be fighting differently, but the reality is that they’re behaving the way they are.
Now it’s up to us to respond wisely.
We can wish we weren’t as triggered, or we can welcome our trigger, see what it reveals, and try to bring ourselves back to wider awareness.
The “tension” between who we are, how things are, how others are, and how we sometimes wish things were, that’s the feeling of reality inviting us to dance with it.
We can create truly special situations together, we can give birth to miracles and co-create magic.
But to do so we need to collaborate with reality.
Which starts by seeing it and welcoming it.