NONE OF THE ABOVE

A young man once sent his intended date two roses with the attached note: "If there is hope that my love for you is reciprocated, please wear the red rose in your corsage tonight; however, if my love is hopeless of fulfillment, please wear the white rose." That evening, the young lady wore a yellow rose. Our minds tend to work in an either/or fashion. Either this will happen or that— we'll either succeed or we'll fail; we'll be happy or unhappy, rich or poor, loved or unloved, enlightened or unenlightened. Yet much of our life is actually none of the above— life is quicksilver, so fast that when we try to catch hold of it, it has already changed into something else. Rather than try to capture life in the web of our thought structure, perhaps we can learn to relax our struggle and let life reveal itself to us. A child or a flower or a tree will teach us its secrets only in proportion to our letting go and letting it show us.