“Peace is not the absence of resistance. It’s learning to stop judging yourself for being human.” ~unknown
At the time of this writing, I am on vacation.
My wife and I parked next to a quiet lake in our RV, a small mobile version of our home. We’ve always loved that part of it: bringing our little piece of the world wherever we go. Our coffee mugs. Our blanket. our favorite food Our routine. Small familiar things make an unfamiliar place like us.
This morning, the lake looked perfectly still.
The rain pattered softly on the window. The sky was gray and heavy in that familiar way that suggested the weather might get worse before the day was out.
The forecast was supposed to be perfect: mid-eighties, sunny, the kind of weather people imagine when they think of a peaceful weekend.
Yesterday was warm, but windy. Not just the wind. Enough wind that we kept the awning in check. Enough air that the chair needs to adjust. Windy enough that even slack felt like it needed a little management.
The rain started this morning, and storms are called for later as a cold front pushes through.
There was a version of me, and if I’m honest, sometimes still is, it would silently resist this whole day because reality failed to cooperate with the expectations I had created for it. Not dramatically. Only internally. That subtle pull. That invisible argument with what is happening.
“It wasn’t supposed to go this way.”
I think there’s a lot of pain hidden in that sentence, not from pain alone, but from pain resistance, change, and the simple fact that life doesn’t conform to the script we’ve written for it.
And often, resist our own reactions.
We think we shouldn’t feel the frustration. The disappointment we felt we should have had. The concern we believe should go away now.
I did this with the weather forecast. But I’ve done it in relationships, at work, in grief, in healing, and in my own head.
I’ve experienced this when conversations with my wife didn’t go the way I’d hoped, and instead of just admitting I was hurt or disagreeable, I started building a case in my mind.
I experienced this at work when an obstacle turned into a five and the day I had planned slowly disappeared.
I’ve experienced this when I wake up anxious for no apparent reason and immediately start questioning why it’s still happening. Still this? Still here? After so much practice? After so much breath?
This is the part I don’t always like to admit, especially as someone who practices meditation and mindfulness.
I know how to break. I know how to breathe. I know how to notice the thought before it happens. I know the receiving language.
What I didn’t always realize was that I was trying to accept reality and was quietly rejecting my own experience.
And yet, there I was: annoyed by the rain, checking the forecast again, desperately trying to catch my breath.
I used to think that giving up meant becoming untouchable. Like if I meditate enough, reflect enough and heal enough, eventually life will stop affecting me so deeply.
I thought awareness was supposed to make me calmer, more evolved, less reactive.
But somewhere along the way, even awareness begins to feel functional.
Every difficult emotion becomes something to optimize. Every uncomfortable moment becomes a lesson that I need to extract meaning from. Every reaction had to pass through some invisible spiritual filter before I allowed myself to experience it.
Was I dealing with attachments? Arrogance? Resistance? Misalignment?
Other things to fix?
It becomes exhausting. Not because mindfulness has no value, but because I’ve turned awareness into another control mechanism.
Sometimes I did it in small, almost invisible ways.
Maybe a text didn’t come back as quickly as I’d hoped, and I told myself I was monitoring my attachment. But really, I was just frustrated, and sometimes mad.
A plan changed at the last minute, and I told myself I was practicing flexibility. But really, I was bored.
There’s a kind of honesty that gets lost when everything turns into an education too quickly.
Beneath it all was another fear: If I really let go, if I stopped managing every reaction, maybe I’d stop caring.
Maybe acceptance will make me passive. Maybe peace will tear me apart. Maybe I’ll become one of those people who shrug everything off and call it wisdom.
But it never happened.
I still care. I care about the day. I took care of my wife. I care about our time together.
What I’ve come to realize is that letting go is never about caring less. It was about demanding less perfection from me.
It was about allowing a moment to be frustrating without turning my frustration into another personal failure.
That’s the real thing I’m finally starting to see.
I just didn’t resist reality. I was resisting the fact that I still resisted reality. That second layer is tedious.
It’s one thing to be disappointed by the rain on vacation. It’s another thing to judge yourself for being disappointed in the rain on vacation.
It’s one thing to feel upset when plans change. It’s another thing to fix that irritation means you’re not as peaceful, evolved, or grounded as you thought.
That’s where I think a lot of us get stuck.
We don’t just feel what we feel. We evaluate it. We grade it. We now compare ourselves to who we think we should be.
And sometimes mindfulness, if we’re not careful, becomes just another way to do that. Instead of giving us more room to be human, it becomes another standard we’re failing to meet.
Meditation is where I notice this most clearly.
I sit down, close my eyes and immediately start trying to get the “right” kind of experience. I want my breath to be deep. I want my mind to be calm. I want my body to be soft. I want to feel calm, open, grateful, wise.
But usually, the body tells the truth before the mind is ready to admit it. My jaw is tight. My chest is guarded. My thoughts out loud. My breathing is shallow.
And then I try to fix it. I try to breathe better. Relax better. Get better.
Which, of course, is another form of control.
The harder I try to make breathing feel natural, the more unnatural it becomes.
But every once in a while, I stop interrupting for a second. Not because I figured anything out. Not because I have reached a higher state. I’m just tired of fending for myself.
And in that small place the body remembers. Breathing goes by itself.
Not quite. Not spiritually. Just honestly.
Maybe life is the same.
Maybe peace is not the absence of chaos. Maybe peace is learning to loosen the constant bargain with reality, while I admit that sometimes I’ll still resist it because I’m human.
So this morning, as the rain settled down at the campground and the forecast changed again, I found myself saying:
“So what.”
Not with bitterness. Not with indifference. Almost with relief.
Because maybe that’s the adventure. Not the polished version. Not the curated version built from perfect weather, perfect mood and perfect faith. uncertainty changing sky An unexpected storm is blowing. The mystery of not quite knowing what the day will turn out to be.
Later, after the rain subsided, my wife and I stepped outside.
The chairs were still wet. The air felt cooler. The lake looked different than before. Not good. not bad Just changed.
Nothing about the day followed the picture I had in my mind. But we were still there. together coffee in hand I see water.
And I realized how many simple moments I missed because I was busy comparing them to my imagination, and then resisting my own resistance.
Maybe this is what I was looking for all along. Don’t think that feeling is off. A mind that stops responding. A mind that hasn’t figured out how to stay calm through it all.
Freedom enough to stop demanding to be something else every moment before letting yourself live.
It doesn’t mean I’m enlightened. I just want to say that I stopped trying so hard to be someone who never gets caught.
I stopped turning every uncomfortable feeling into a self-improvement project. I stopped the moment for anything else to happen before I agreed to live.
I let the day be a day. I let the weather be the weather. I allow myself to be a person who sometimes wants sunshine when it rains.
And I stopped treating this desire as evidence that I was doing something wrong.
Later, the sky cleared.
There was a breeze. It was hot again. Almost exactly the kind of weather I thought I needed to enjoy the day.
Which seemed ridiculous.
Not because it proved some great spiritual point, but because life kept changing before I finished deciding what it meant.
Maybe that’s the habit.
Not to stop caring. Never stop hoping. Don’t stop getting frustrated when things change.
But stop making every change a personal betrayal. To stop needing reality to match the script before I let myself be here.
Because this life is what I keep getting. Not the polished version. Not the version in my head. This one: rain, wind, clear, change, uncontrollable, and alive.
about Brian Rich
Brian Reich has written about mindfulness, self-honesty, and living with a less scripted mind through The Unscripted Mind, Just Breathe, and The Pause Room. Her work explores ordinary moments where awareness, resistance, humor and humanity meet. You can find his free articles and resources just-breathe.ghost.io.
