if this then that...not so much as is assumed

One of the strangest things you discover once you really begin looking at your own mind is that life has this peculiar way of giving you what you want, but only when you stop clutching at it…You begin to see the universe was never withholding anything from you. You were simply moving against the current, insisting the river should bend to your will. The moment you ease the resistance just a little, life begins to show you the path it already prepared. That’s not weakness, it’s intelligence. That’s wisdom because the river has always known where it was going. You were the one trying to paddle upstream. We spend our lives trying to control things that were never in our control to begin with. We draw maps, make plans, tighten our grip on the steering wheel only to discover again and again that life has a far stranger choreography than anything we could choreograph ourselves. The mind hates this of course. It wants certainty the way a child wants a nightlight. It says, “Tell me how it will unfold. Tell me now.” But reality doesn’t operate by deadlines or demands. It moves like weather - unpredictable, organic and completely uninterested in your expectations. In Zen, they speak of the Great Doubt. Not doubt as in pessimism, but doubt as in surrendering the fantasy that you can intellectually pin down the universe...the universe isn’t an equation it’s a mystery - alive, moving, breathing. And the more you insist on controlling it the more it slips through your fingers.

- Alan Watts, British and American writer and speaker known for interpreting and popularizing Buddhist, Taoist, and Hindu philosophy for a Western audience.