Sanity, Courage, Health and Surrender
"May all beings be free from suffering. May all beings be happy from within"
The voice of a monk echoed through the hall as he read the paritta under the pale glow of Vesak lanterns. The words hung in the air like an unseen blessing, folding around everyone in the room.
Before me lay a simple wishing card. So I scrawled four words: sanity, courage, health, surrender. I’m not sure where they came from. Perhaps they rose from some quiet place inside me that still wanted peace.
Some people say I’ve always been the easy one. The kind one. The good child. If only they knew the truth. I took the easy way because deep down I know my time is near. I carry the silent certainty that I may not be here much longer. Perhaps that’s why I no longer fight the judgments.
I’ve stopped explaining myself to those who don’t truly want to understand.
If they judge me, so be it.
If they reduce me to a version of myself based on a handful of moments or their own projections, so be it.
When the end comes and it will, for all of us none of this noise will matter.
Thinking about death has become a strange kind of shield. It helps me survive the sharp edges of others’ opinions, the whispered comparisons, the prejudices of even those I once called friends.
The truth? I don’t care anymore. Or rather, I try not to. If I let those voices sink too deep, I know I’ll lose myself in them. So I choose surrender over struggle. Let them misunderstand. Let them project. I have no room left to carry that weight.
I’ve never been one for forgiveness, it always felt too cheesy, and “sorry” too hollow a word. But I’ve learned this carrying resentment only tightens the knots inside. And if the teachings mean anything, they remind me judgment is ignorance wearing certainty as a mask. So I let it pass. Like the flickering candlelight in the temple.
As Ted Lasso once said:
"I hope that either all of us, or none of us, are judged by the actions of our weakest moments. But rather, by the strength we show "
Perhaps the point is not only to seek liberation for ourselves, but to extend compassion to those too trapped in their own darkness to see the whole of us.
In the end, I will walk this path quietly sanity, courage, health, surrender , knowing that none of us are only what others see. We are the sum of what we survive, and of the love we dare to give despite it all.
