When I was about 6 years old, growing up in Southern California, it seemed to me that it never rained in the summer. I loved it. Sunshine and warmth day after day to play outside.
Then my Grandfather took us all on a road trip to Las Vegas and it started to rain on the way there. In the middle of the desert it started to rain and I was terrified. I felt like Chicken Little and the sky was falling. "It doesn't rain in the summer," my brain was telling me. There was a crack in the world as I knew it.
Looking back, it's a great example of how we can create a version of how the world works and when it doesn't show up in that version, we lose our footing.
We all create versions of how the world works. That's what our mind is designed to do. It's constantly trying to make sense of what's happening to give us a sense of stability so we can go on with what we need to do.
But that version is just our thinking. Like my thinking it doesn't rain in the summer. Nothing wrong with having a version of how the world works. We all do it. But when we recognize that we all have versions of how the world works and that our version is just thought, our personal thinking, and maybe not the absolute truth of reality, when we begin to recognize that, we don't hold so tightly to our thoughts, to how we believe the world needs to show up for us to feel okay.
When it starts to rain in the summer and I know that I've believed it doesn't rain in summer but see that it is, I'm more willing to pause and take a look at what is true. Is the sky falling, or did I maybe have it wrong about how life works, how life should show up?
What if Life is living us and we can trust that Life has our back, even if it may not look like it? What if we can trust that we'll have the wherewithal to deal with whatever shows up because we have access to the intelligence that is holding it all together in the first place?
What if we are Life that is living us?