Reading ‘The Life Impossible by Matt Haig. Matt has been candid about his tendency towards depression and suicidal struggles, which make his stories very much worth reading. He fascinates me because its clear he ‘knows’ the experience of all things connected and that the answer to Life as it Is, is a authentic Yes, yet this ‘knowing’ has not kept him from his depressive experiences, though it seems to have helped him move through the experiences.

The Life Impossible starts to with a young person letter to a math teacher asking for help, which very much resonated with me.

…
At times I have found it very hard to carry on. It feels my life is already written at this young age and everything is known. I sometimes can’t breathe with all the pressure.
I am in a pattern, like a number pattern, a Fibonacci sequence – 0,1,2,3,5,8,13,21… – and like that sequence things get less surprising the further I go on. But instead of realizing the next number is found by adding the two before it, you realize that everything ahead of you has already been decided. And as I get older, as I pass more numbers, the pattern becomes more predictable. And nothing can break that pattern. I used to believe in God but now I don’t believe in anything. I was in love but I messed that up. I hate myself sometimes. I mess everything thing up. I feel guilty all the time… and I feel guilty for that too..
I look at what is happening in the world and I see that our whole species is on a path to destruction. Like it is programmed, another pattern. And I just get fed up with being a human, being this small tiny thing that can’t do anything about the world. Everything feels impossible…
Matt Haig – The Life Impossible

(The novel is the response of the math teacher)

I suspect a lot of people can identify with those questions and thoughts, especially in this digital age where everything including ourselves is becoming a algorithm.

The experience of the blank canvas, beginner mind, Eternal Now… hasn’t and won’t make things different. The patterns remain… (My suspicion is that only forgiveness can change a pattern. Perhaps the only tool we have to influence life)
Still realizing the Eternal, their is a change which I can only describe as bitter sweet, which is a kind of contentment?
I suspect Campbell had it right when he said – “Realizing the relationship of the temporal moment to the eternal—not moment, but forever— is the sense of life.”

Richard Wagamese says it better

–
From our very first breath, we are in relationship. With that in-drawn draft of air, we become joined to everything that ever was, is and ever will be. When we exhale, we forget that relationship by virtue of the act of living.
Our breath commingles with all breath, and we are a part of everything. That’s the simple fact of things. We are born into a state of relationship. Relationships never end; they just change. In believing that lies the freedom to carry compassion, empathy, love, kindness and respect into and through whatever changes. We are made more by that practice. – Richard Wagamese