The flight has been delayed.  Two hours.  Maybe three.  No one is saying.  A security issue in Toronto, so the rumor goes.

The bags from the  flight with the gear we need are supposed to be on the conveyor belt. They’re not.  They’re somewhere else: another country.

The hotel we planned on is booked.  The busy season, you know.

We have no clue as to how to find another hotel.  The phone doesn’t work.  The server is down. We don’t know the city.  We don’t speak the language.

The airline won’t re-book us on a different flight.  Yes, of course there  are seats available, even though it’s the busy season.  But they’re not the “right class.”  So we can’t get them – at least not at a cost that mere mortals can afford.

The weather sucks.  The wind blows too hard.  The wind blows too long.  We go down instead of up.

The plans change.  They become uncertain.

It all changes.  It’s all uncertain.

How to be ok with that – that is the question.

What a challenge for someone like me.

Here’s the way I think things should go: (i) make the plan; (ii) work the plan; (iii) achieve the goal.

Anything that disrupts this model is, well, disruptive.

I so admire folks who are flexible.  People who can shift gears easily, who go with the flow.

I’m not one of those folks.  When the flow – my flow – gets interrupted, I get frustrated and cantankerous. When the plans get switched up, I come unhinged.

The problem with this, of course, is that inflexible folks (like me) can miss the unexpected opportunities that come with change. New and different flows lead to new and different places. A barrier can become an invitation to a new experience, a closed door an entrance to a new world. If only we allow it, if only we are open to it.

And this requires grace.

According to the dictionary folks, grace is “elegance and dignity in form, movement and expression.”  To be graceful, to be grace-filled, allows one to move easily in the world.  And to be ok with uncertainty.

Grace flows from wisdom.  “Wisdom is not knowing, but being,” says Jack Kornfield.  “The wise heart is not one that understands everything – it is the heart that can tolerate the truth of not knowing,” he says.

Wisdom allows for ambiguity.

Suzuki Roshi once summed up all of Buddhist teaching in three simple words: “Not always so.” Wisdom and grace allow us to let go of our preconceived notions of how things “should” be and permit us to experience the fullness of life as it is, life as it actually unfolds before us.

Although we are supposed to be on a mountain, we stand instead in a city park. At midnight. Long past the hour that should have been bedtime, we watch the Milonga – tango dancers from Mendoza – moving, gliding, spinning across the walkways.  Obstacles for these dancers become opportunities to exhibit style and flourish. The edge of the pavement, the unanticipated intrusion of another dancer, are welcomed only as further chances to demonstrate elegance and grace.

To live with grace.  In the face of obstacles, change, adversity, disruption, ambiguity, uncertainty.

That is the challenge.

 

You can’t stop the waves.  But you can learn to surf.

– Swami Satchitananda