We are often told that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, while expecting a different result. Perhaps that is true, to an extent. But perhaps it warrants revisiting.

Each day of our lives, we are either following patterns, making patterns, or trying to break patterns. As Rich Plass writes, we're addicted to a certain way of being ourselves. And that doesn't come out of a vacuum - we've been spending our entire lives thus far building this concept of what it means to be "me."

Trouble is, we might not like what that looks like. Each of us has some parts of our story we wish we could rewrite. Pieces we wish weren't etched on the stone-like substance that is the past. Sometimes that's about loss. Someone we lost. An opportunity not chosen. A pleasant season of life that came to an end.

And sometimes our discomfort with the past is more about shame. The words we spoke when angry, that had a lasting effect years later. The way we handled money in our youth. The relationships we let go.

All of that works into the "me" pattern. And everything we continue to do day by day as present builds into future, that continues constructing that "me" concept.

Some things in life, we know how to work on. We can put a todo list together for the things that need to happen, and then knock them off, one by one. Get the groceries. Make the meals. Clean the rooms. Pay the bills. Spend time with family members and friends. Give some time away.

In that intentional space, we can have a plan for making our "me" concept more palatable to ourselves. And, we like to assume we have some measure of agency to actually go make that plan come to life. We never like to feel like we can't improve ourselves - that inkling leads to despair.

But to approach our lives as if every part of them is an open-book test - that would be a mistake. An understandable mistake, to be sure, but an error nonetheless. We want it to work that way - we want everything to be able to be unlocked by putting in more effort, or having the right attitude, or just gaining the right insight. I need more time in the morning to get oriented for the day, so I need to put in the effort to get up earlier. I don't like a part of my job, but I can find a better attitude to make the time pass faster.

Then there are the things that life casts our direction, that we just don't know how to comprehend. Every one of us will have those things, those times, those people, where that agency we want to have just disintegrates. It's like being in the colorful land of Oz, using my agency to journey down the yellow-brick road to my goal, all for it to disintegrate into a Kansas tornado.

None of us is immune to life's storms. Far from being able to mold and adjust ourselves like Play-Doh - in those times, we become much more rigid, just trying to get through a day at a time without our more brittle parts shattering.

Here's the thing - we want those storms to be few and far between. We want to see them coming on the horizon (and sometimes we do), so that we can exert some of that agency we like to think we have to try to avoid them. Some can be sidestepped. And some, well, they can't. And the storm comes, we find ourselves disintegrating, and it can be difficult to figure out what to do next.

We could try to seize whatever agency we have left, to build something in the psyche to try to protect it. We can spin elaborate theories to give the storm a purpose, and at least have that to ground our hopes.

But those effort-centered approaches are really meant for building our mental and spiritual muscles - not for healing our wounds. This world is damaged - parts of it disintegrate and fall into chaos. When they do, that tears into the fabric of our minds and the substance of our souls.

No matter how attuned we may be to the winds and weathers of our souls, sometimes a storm comes up out of a blue sky. When it does, give yourself permission to rest.

We can ask the why questions - definitely allow that voice. But we can let go of the pressure to handle the situation the ideal way, to always have the right approach to weather the storm efficiently. Some wounds take longer to heal than others. And that is ok.

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• Photo by Anandu Vinod on Unsplash