WILLY-NILLY

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” — E.M. Forster

The term “willy-nilly” means things happening in a disorderly or disorganized way, without consideration or sense. It spells unpredictability and confusion. For example: the maddeningly haphazard way that people shove their shopping carts into their corrals in grocery store parking lots, all willy-nilly. It’s a quaint-sounding way to describe utter chaos.

Recently, I learned the etymology of “willy-nilly.” It is a contraction. The original phrase was “Will ye or nill ye.” Or “Will I, nill I.” To nill was to refuse or reject something. So willy-nilly meant something like, “whether you’re willing or unwilling…” It’s happening, like it or not.

Such is life. Life happens. Sometimes it goes how we think it should, as we like it. Often it goes in ways we’d rather it didn’t. It’s a mixed bag, and it can feel like a terrible chaos much of the time.

Most human progress and innovation has arisen out of attempts to ameliorate or harness the willy-nilly-ness of life. Civilization and culture endeavor to manage and contain the willy-nilly. Philosophy and religion, science and art aim to contextualize, explain, and process the willy-nilly. It’s all born of our yearning for control.

The Science of Mind philosophy offers that we can utilize the creative power of our minds to help control conditions and circumstances. Affirmations and prayer can bring order and purpose to our otherwise tumultuous existence. With practice, it begins to feel less like life is happening to-at-on us without our consent, and more like we are active participants in its creative unfoldment.

In my experience, this works. Absolutely. And… I wonder…

Is my life really showing up in a less willy-nilly way, or have I just grown more nimble as I navigate the ups and downs, ins and outs? Have I actually changed anything — actualized my life with intention, transformed the world, fundamentally — or have I simply gotten better and more experienced dealing with the same old bullshit?

I think — yes.

Yes, it’s always madness — and — we’re always making sense out of it. Of course, it’s willy-nilly, it always will be — and — whether we will or nill does still make a difference. Sure, life as a whole is a mess of complications and contradictions — and — we are constantly shaping our piece of it, in big and little ways. With every breath, every step, every commitment, every wish, we are contributing to and creating what comes next.

Maybe sometimes we’re only forging ourselves, who we can be, who we choose to be. That’s not nothing! Indeed, that may be everything.

Sometimes we have to reckon with the impossible, the unthinkable, the unbearable. With heartache, loss, and injustice. With such tremendous imbalance that it truly feels as if we have no control at all in the matter. Even here, maybe especially here, it can be an invaluable spiritual practice to claim and own our participation. Even here, we choose.

We choose whether to accept that what is, is, or to deny the reality of it. We choose whether to greet life with poise and commitment, or kicking and screaming as it carries us out. Certainly, we can choose resistance, refusal — I’m not saying we shouldn’t — there can be great power in nilling it.

But I think the real power of will-power and nill-power is much less about bulldozing one’s way through, or forcing things to go a particular way, but rather more about remembering ourselves as participants and co-creators. Remembering that life forever includes us, that it’s not against us and there’s little to be won by being against it. Remembering that we always have agency, and that we can shift the universe with our choices, even in the face of tremendous obstacles or opposition.