For years, I’ve begun many of my prayers with four simple words: This or Something Better.
The first part has never been difficult for me. This.
I’ve always known what I wanted. I love dreaming, imagining, pursuing, creating. When something captures my heart, I don’t hesitate to devote myself to it. I make plans, do the work, and give it my wholehearted attention.
The second part took longer to learn. Something better.
Not because I doubted life’s generosity, but because I often believed I already knew exactly what that generosity should look like.
This or Something Better
Many years ago, Gary and I bought a property in Pacific Palisades to build our dream home. We rented a nearby house so we could oversee the construction without battling Los Angeles traffic. It was built in the 1960s and overlooked the Pacific Ocean. We loved it from the moment we saw it.
We asked the owners if they would sell. They couldn’t. Estate and tax circumstances made it impossible. Still, we asked again. We made offers. We searched for solutions because we were certain this was meant to be our home.
Around that time, we sought the guidance of a spiritual teacher. He gave us a simple prayer and suggested we hang it in the house.
This or something better.
We loved the prayer. We just silently edited it in our minds. “This,” we thought. Not something better. Just…this.
Then one afternoon, while our dream home was still under construction, we stopped to look at another house that had just come on the market. It sat atop a nearby ridge with sweeping queen’s necklace views of the Pacific Ocean. At night, the coastline shimmered with lights that looked like royal jewels stretching into the distance.
Gary negotiated with the seller. We finished building and sold the home we thought was our dream and moved into the one we never saw coming. Looking back, there were so many strange and beautiful circumstances surrounding that purchase that it felt less like finding a house than discovering one that had somehow been waiting for us all along.
The house we thought we couldn’t live without became part of our past.
The one we couldn’t have imagined became home.
Sometimes life doesn’t deny our deepest longing. It answers it more generously than we knew how to ask.
Something Better
Over the years, that little prayer has become the space between declaring my desire and releasing my grip.
When I want something, I still pursue it wholeheartedly. I still show up. I still ask. I still negotiate, create, learn, persist, and devote myself to what matters. The difference is this: I leave room for something better.
Perhaps that’s what surrender really is: releasing our attachment to the form while remaining devoted to the essence.
I’ve come to believe that devotion and surrender are not opposites. They’re partners.
Devotion is how we participate. Surrender is how we make room for possibility.
For me, this isn’t passive optimism or wishful thinking. My deepest belief is that everything is unfolding for our greatest good, even when I cannot yet understand how. That belief doesn’t keep me from participating fully in my life. It calls me into fuller participation.
I’ve learned to dream with my whole heart while leaving room for one question. What if life has an imagination greater than mine?
Because sometimes the life waiting for us isn’t different from what we hoped for. It’s the very thing we were longing for, just in a form we never imagined.
And perhaps the question worth carrying is this:
Where in your life have you been holding tightly to “this”…when life may already be unfolding something better?