A Resounding Yes to Life is the last thing I sometimes feel, or feel like saying!  For years now I have put energy and intention toward being less judgmental; more accepting of myself, others, what life offers up day to day; and experiencing less resistance… all with some success.  But some days, a resounding yes to life is just not where it’s at!  And that’s OK, of course.  Accepting even that, is part of the bigger game.  

Still, when I recently came across this offering from a fellow named Douglas Harding, an English philosophical and spiritual writer, (who founded The Headless Way… an intriguing path to our True Nature and deep freedom), I laughed and felt a resounding Yes.  Here it is, for your consideration:

“Naturally you are all-powerful. You aren’t all-powerful in the sense that you could – if you really pulled yourself together and got around to it – set up a model universe in which there’s love without indifference and hate, courage without danger and fear, goodness without evil, beauty without dreariness and ugliness, life without death. No: you can no more make these improvements than you can make black whitewash or silent bangs. The list of the things that even you can’t do is endless. All the same, you are all-powerful in the sense that, accepting the coexistence and clash of opposites as the price (a terribly high price, but not prohibitive) of a cosmos, you let out an almighty YES! to it all – YES throughout it all and in spite of it all, YES because this (in all its astounding and awful and lovely detail) is what you are, and YES because you will what you are.”  (The Little Book of lIfe and Death)


It was really fun and delicious to say a resounding yes to life just then.  And it is always a choice. I have written before about The Power of Positivity, where I describe how saying Yes does not approving, or condoning, the horrors that are happening in some places in our world.  But it is a fact that when we resist, shout no, moan and whine, there is so much less chance of dealing well with the difficulties, or serving ourselves and others. What we resist persists, and creates headaches and stomach aches, and prevents us from being our best, from showing up and acting for the good. 

Viktor Frankl wrote about this choice in the most horrific of circumstances, the Nazi extermination camps. “Regardless of the conditions around us, no one can make us think or feel anything. There is a gap between any experience on the outside, and how we think about it which them determines our feelings which is our reality.”

What do you say in response to life most days?  Are you happy with your choices?  We’re on a journey, in this together, I’d love to hear.  Yes, I would!

Jill Schroder is the author of BECOMING: Journeying Toward Authenticity.  BECOMING is an invitation for self-reflection, and to mine our memorable moments for insights, meaning, and growth.  Check the website for a sample chapter, or see the reviews to get a flavor for the volume.  Your feedback, forwards, tweets, likes are most welcome. 🙂

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