How many times in our lives are we handed something that’s perfect as it is – where all we have to do is simply step back and let it be?

I think of my own experiences in carving. Sometimes, I’ll have a spoon that I really love which I’ve worked out of Cherry, or Mulberry, or whatever.  And as I stand there looking at it, I think, “Ah, man, I just need to make this one more cut.”  And then I do… and it ends up being the one cut too many.  Suddenly, I’m left holding something completely different than what it was intended to be.

The same thing happens with my writing.  Often times I’ll edit the shit out of something, and what I’m really doing is stomping the life out of it.  So, I end up going back to what I originally had, and that thing lives and breathes on its own.

I’ve talked to a lot of people about this process of spiritual healing – of deep emotional recovery work.  So often we get bogged down in the fucking weeds with this, and we feel like it’s never going to end.  We feel like we’re getting buried. 

We have these arbitrary goals that we set for ourselves: the way things should be; the way things need to be.  When they don’t line up, we start to blame ourselves.  We start to feel as if something is wrong – as if we’re not doing something right.

And that’s really what this whole thing is about.  It’s the idea that there’s a process unfolding, and all we can do is show up for it, do the work we’re called to do, not worry about the results, and just let the thing live and breathe on its own…