Let it Breathe

We’ve been conditioned to define everything—to categorize, to label, to shape our experiences into something tangible, something with clear edges. As if meaning is only real when it’s articulated, when it fits neatly into a framework we can understand. We’ve been taught that something is only valuable if we can name it, measure it, predict where it’s going. But I’m realizing now that maybe this need for definition is what stifles the very essence of what we’re trying to hold.

Life isn’t meant to be boxed in so neatly. Some things—perhaps the most important things—are meant to breathe. To unfold in ways we don’t expect. To take on shapes we couldn’t have imagined if we had tried to control them. And yet, we resist. We crave certainty, grasp for conclusions. We meet new experiences and immediately ask, What does this mean? Where is this going? We force clarity where it isn’t meant to exist yet, terrified of standing in the unknown. But in doing so, we cut ourselves off from something greater—an experience that is richer precisely because it is undefined.

This is the lesson I have been learning. That surrender is not a form of passivity, but an act of deep trust. That letting go of the need to name something doesn’t mean it disappears—it means it has the space to become what it was meant to be. There is a quiet kind of magic in the unknown, a depth that only reveals itself when we stop trying to shape it prematurely.

I think about how often we suffocate potential by trying to control it. How we set expectations that limit what could unfold naturally. We do this with relationships, with careers, with our own sense of self. We decide who we should be, what our lives should look like, what boxes need to be checked in order to feel “on track.” But what if there is no track? What if the entire point is simply to follow what feels alive, without demanding that it fit a certain mold?

When I loosen my grip, I feel the shift. The energy softens. There is no force—only flow. The moment feels fuller, more expansive, because I’m no longer trying to force it into a shape it isn’t meant to take. And what I’m beginning to see is that when I allow things to unfold on their own terms, they often become more than I ever could have imagined.

I have spent so much of my life seeking certainty, mistaking it for security. But certainty is an illusion—life is never that predictable, and trying to force it into predictability only leaves me feeling disconnected, rigid, resistant. Real security, I’m learning, comes not from knowing exactly where I’m going, but from trusting myself to be okay no matter where I land.

Maybe life isn’t about moving toward something. Maybe it’s about learning to be in the space between—where possibility lives, where things shift and evolve in their own time. Maybe it’s about embracing the unknown, not as something to fear, but as something to be in awe of. Maybe it’s about realizing that the most beautiful things in life—the ones that truly change us—are never the ones we tried to control. They’re the ones we allowed to be.