Be available for life to happen to you
a decision-making hack PLUS my big "outta here" news (scroll down)
Bill Murray once said, “I try to be available for life to happen to me”.
I don’t know if the line is “particularly Bill Murray”. Or if Bill Murray is particularly and philosophically quotable, as a rule. But I find the simple poetic inversion that his utterance contains very, very satisfying. Especially in full, melancholy moments such as the one I find myself in rich now. Plus, it helps me stay sane in a world where the priorities are so desperately off. And to make big big decisions like the one below. Oh, yes. I’m heading out and off. Again.
Which is why I want to roll it around a little with you here today.
On immediate reading we might think the wisdom too passive. Our neoliberal framework dictates that life should be available to us and we, atomised agents that we are, go make things happen atop the matrix that is life. We do the happening.
But aren’t we all just exhausted by this notion? Doesn’t it just seem so tediously redundant to forever have to overlay happenings on the far more powerful force of life? It’s tiring and dumb. It’s like trying to throw a blanket on a herd of cats.
And doesn’t the inverse present as intuitively and viscerally so much more …congruent?
At a material, molecular level, we are a porous entity and life passes through us, moulding and shaping us. More than 90 per cent of our cells are renewed every year. Half of our body is not human. Apparently, 47 per cent of our total cell count is made up of microscopic colonists, such as bacteria, viruses, fungi and archaea. Sounds and smells pass through us. We are made up of plastic, too - recent reports tell us we now ingest a credit-card amount each week.
Recent science also shows that most of our cells lie dormant until triggered by the environment. We become by being in life. Life happens to us.
We can spend a lifetime resisting this wonderful amorphous flow. Or we can open ourselves - become available - to the amazingly vibrant, intricate and interconnected mechanicians of the flow of the universe.
The latter is the truth, right?
I have to relearn this wisdom repeatedly. I’m in such a place right now…
So, some news just in from me….I’m moving to Paris. For now.
Yep, I leave in May and I’ll go for six months. Maybe longer. I think I’ll be in Paris. That’s my thinking. For now.
I’ll fill you all in on the details shortly, but today I just want to share that the decision was made in the spirit of “trying to be available for life to happen to me”. I’ve been in a sludgy, stuck place, gripping and trying to do all “the happening”. This happens often. I’m an A-type, eldest child, Capricorn, Enneagram 8, FFS.
But I have been getting nowhere and - TBH - I’ve been unhappy for some time. I’ve had no momentum. My thoughts are cynical. The world is existentially precarious (I’m not liking what’s going on down with Biden and Putin at this minute; I smell horrible destruction) and here I am misguidedly bogged down with snowflakey shit and to’n’fro “fluent bullshit” distractions.
Life has been telling me: WRONG WAY GO BACK! Sarah, stop trying to happen, get available!
As I say, I have to relearn (remember) the wisdom of opening and letting go and being receptive regularly. It’s a practice.
In general, I learn best via a royal slap-down, which always follows a period of gripping life too tight. But it can also come (more sweetly) via some hefty serendipity, if and when I do in fact release my grip. Have you read about the time I met Maria Shriver from Wild and Precious? It’s an illustration of my point:
Do you have these kinds of things happen too?
And, so, yes, I booked a ticket to Europe. It was an act of opening, reading where life is directing me, being observant of invites and then stepping into the breach. I’m scared and troubled by the idea of flinging myself out into the world again, as a single woman approaching 50 (the Shirley Valentine visuals are irksome).
But I choose the perilous and interesting life (as per Virginia Woolf). And the hefty serendipity has been flowing in.
I’m reminded of Dave Chapelle’s metaphor…
In an episode of Comedians Getting Coffee in Cars (Watched it? On Netflix? I recommend it!), Jerry (Seinfeld) asks Dave about his “process”. Dave explains (and I’m paraphrasing) that it’s like the car (life/inspiration) pulls up outside and honks for your attention. Get in!
Now, you might be in your pyjamas and want to get changed. Or pack a few things. You might wish to sing out to the driver (the flow of life), can you just hang on until I’m ready? But, as Dave says, life doesn’t - and shouldn’t - wait. You gotta get out there and just climb into the passenger seat and let it take you on the ride.
You gotta be available. And ready to just go when the invite from life arrives.
I’m also reminded of a Frank Bruni wisdom
The New York Times columnist Frank Bruni wrote a column back in 2015 about how each year he actively chooses to spend a full week (where he once used to “drop in” for a few days) on vacation with his large extended family. He’s childless, like me, and the whole scene is very familiar (my family does exactly the same thing at Christmas).
“All 20 of us — my siblings, my dad, our better halves, my nieces and nephews — find a beach house big enough to fit the whole unruly clan….We tensely divvy up the bedrooms, trying to remember who fared poorly or well on the previous trip. And we fling ourselves at one another for seven days and seven nights.”
Why a full week? To be available for life to happen, when and if life is ready. As Bruni writes,
“With a more expansive stretch, there’s a better chance that I’ll be around at the precise, random moment when one of my nephews drops his guard and solicits my advice about something private.”
“Trying to be available” doesn’t take much trying as such. It’s more of a pulling back and relaxing into breadth and truth. Aligning and getting congruent with the bigger force. For me, it’s opening my physical body through exercise, particularly yoga. It’s about getting playful and loose, which I talk about in this episode:
And it’s about using the “let’s see what happens” mindset, which I talk about in this episode with my meditation teacher.
It’s about being less arrogant.
We can get overly preoccupied with the details of how to be “ready” and whether we are ready enough. But the more important element of being available (for life to happen to us - and thusly, fully, most spontaneously and congruently) is saying yes when the invite arrives, noticing the synchronicities and following them, getting into the car when it honks out front. Saying YES to life when it shows up. Which of course is a wisdom I take from James Hollis (“Our souls are calling us to our appointment with life”):
Can I be stern here? A shit-tonne of life is about to happen to all of us very soon. I’m feeling the rumblings…Russia, AI speeding-ups, El Nino flame throwing. We need to get receptive fast. In a receptive space, we are in the best position to be open to the truth and we won’t be distracted when it comes time to show up and act.
I will continue this conversation - the one about becoming more alive and congruent with the truth of life, and being less distracted. Your feedback on the above is important to me.
Sarah xx
PS. My latest Wild episode is an IRL chat with Rebecca Giblin, coauthor of Chokepoint Capitalism, a Financial Times “best book of 2022” . It’s a must-listen for creatives, music lovers, concert-goers…truth livers. Well, that’s what I reckon…
I so needed to read this today as life is definitely happening to me and it is scary AND fabulous.
Almost 2 years ago on my birthday in April I bought a motorhome with a view to reducing most of my possessions, putting the remaining items in storage while I figure out if motorhome living is for me. The plan was to move into said motorhome in the September.
The motorhome was a such a gift. At the time (early 2021) there was nothing on the market as people unable to travel internationally so choosing local holiday options. Second hand ones were rare and expensive. New ones beyond my budget and a 2-3 year wait. I had all but given up but scrolling through a website site over Easter, there she was. 10 years old and only 26000km. Immaculate. And in an instant, I knew she was mine. Like a kick in the gut.
2 months later I was diagnosed with cancer. All plans off the table for a year. A year became 18 months. Then 22 months. Chemo. Multiple bouts of shingles. Chronic fatigue. My dream seemed to be further and further away.
Then life happened to me again.
I had this little dream that maybe, just maybe I could get into the motorhome by April this year. 2 years after I bought her. But the logical, sensible voice was saying ‘don’t put such pressure on yourself, you haven’t been well, you aren’t that strong anymore...’.
And then the most amazing thing happened. I got notice to vacate my rental by 23 Apr so will be in the motorhome by the 2 year anniversary. I was a little shocked the first night, sad the next day and then excited. I know I can do this.
I was already moving to Ballarat for the latter half of the year to look after a friends 5 acre property and didn’t want to really pay rent while away. And now I won’t.
Sometimes we just need that little push. I have no idea where motorhome living will lead. I just know deep down it is what I need to do. It is my alternative version of tiny house living.
I work 5 days a week as an IT professional with at least one day a week onsite. A very different scenario to the usual grey nomad travelling around Australia. Although at 57 I fit the age demographic. I also fit the fastest growing homeless demographic. Unlike some of my friends who had no choice but to move into their vans or motorhomes, I am choosing this mobile lifestyle. Perhaps I will have some sort of voice in this arena.
Not paying rent allows me to pay for additional healthcare not covered by medical insurance and save extra for when I am older and really need it.
I am opening up to more of life happening. I too have felt stuck and unhappy and when I am in my motorhome, I am so happy. I named her Gemima. It means peaceful earth mother. She is like a warm womb where something is to be birthed. I don’t know what. I don’t need to know. I just need to take the first step. Then the next.
A friend told me that when she looked at me she felt as if a Phoenix was rising from the ashes. The past 5 years have felt like a thorough burning down of what I thought was solid and real, including a belief in who I am so my friends comment resonates with me.
Here’s to more opening to life so it can happen to us.
Oh my goodness. Thank you Sarah for writing this. Recently I'v also found that I'm gripping everything to tightly, which leads me to a place where I find everything is.......grey. I'm not fired up and I try to plan everything to the endth degree which is just simply exhausting. I love the phrase "letting life flow through you", its lets me know that you can just accept where you are and you can just make space for being.
Also, I hope your move and change nourishes you like you need. This article has also encouraged me to be open to moving overseas (for university exhange) for a short period of time and to just "see what happens" rather than trying to organise and plan everything, so thankyou :)