I’ve heard all of my life that identity does not come from things or structure; it comes from a sense of permanency and fulfillment. And acceptance, of course.

Only recently did I discover that this is true.

The whole advertising industry and much of the corporate machine would collapse, I imagine, if people awakened and no longer sought to find their identity through things.

For me, that was a recipe for frustration and suffering. My Iphones could give me pleasure, but they could never give me joy. It takes a lot of knocks to the head to learn that.

Happiness comes and goes, but that is an illusory way to judge oneself. Peace comes from within, and it stays a lot longer than happiness.

“Joy is uncaused,” wrote Eckhart Tolle in the Power Of Now, “and arises from within as the joy of Being.” I was so busy wanting things I did not have that I forgot to want me.

A monk once told Tolle that “all I have earned in the twenty years that I have been a monk I can sum up in one sentence: All that arises passes away.”

What he means was this: “I have learned to offer no resistance to what is: I have learned to allow the present moment to be and to accept the impermanent nature of all things and conditions. Thus I have found peace.”

So much of the fear and anger that I felt was in my resistance to life and reality.

To stop resisting life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness.

It is to stop depending on things being in a certain way, or my way, good or bad.  I don’t have to be perfect to be good.

Things, money, approval, people are all conditions that I thought were essential for my happiness to come to me of their own accord and without struggle or worry.

And they come, and they go.

I appreciate them while they last and honor them when they are gone.

Live moves in cycles; sometimes it flows my way, sometimes it flows in the other. But either way, life is flowing with more ease for me.

Dan wrote this message on my blog in response to an essay I wrote:

“Your logic was tight and unimpeachable, as it often is. I can’t reconcile the vitriolic with a number of your other blog posts, which had  terrific impact.  While I doubt that Good Jon ever relinquishes the keyboard to Bad Jon, I do wonder whether he somehow wrested control.   … Sarcasm and belittling don’t generally seem your style. The knife of outrage cuts both ways.”

I like, even love, the Jon that Dan is describing. He is flawed, imperfect, damaged, perhaps, as Dan describes, unimpeachable and sometimes sarcastic and belittling. The Good Jon and Bad Jon trade off all the time; each often relinquishes the keyboard to the other.

As I have written many times, both of these me’s are real; I am broken in parts, healing in others. I am working to be wiser, better, more compassionate, less angry, and more tolerant.

How far can I go? I have no way of knowing.

But I am no saint, no hero, no perfect human, far from it. The spiritual challenge is for me – and perhaps Dan one day – to accept all of the different Jons.

I am happy with me all my struggles and flaws. They make up the whole, they are part of the puzzle, they are why I can be intolerant, and they are why I be logical and unimpeachable.

I don’t know if one exists without the other.

On a good day, I am close. On a bad day, I am far. This is the curse and challenge of the broken. I accept me and what I am. I am always working on listening and learning and on trying to be better. Sometimes it flows my way, sometimes the other.

The point is I understand who I am and will keep on swimming to get to a better place. We all struggle to accept the reality of other people who disappoint and frustrate us.

I accept who I am right now and at every minute of every day, even though I know, I will change and must change. That is the story of me. That is what peace is a meaning for me.

Some days I feel everything is collapsing and crumbling around me, but I still feel a deeper inner peace than I have known before.

I may not always be happy, but more and more, I am at peace.