There’s this common misconception that, in order to be truly happy, one has to achieve complete order and structure in all aspects of life. That our existence is all about solving issues and untangling threads, so that later, when we will have managed to stack every single piece of our lives neatly on a shelf, we finally find real contentment.

Life rarely works like that though, does it?

If you think of how many times you felt like you had absolutely everything under control, the answer seems pretty straight-forward: never. Life never really seems neat, or orderly, or perfect in the Hollywood-movie way we dream about when overwhelmed by everything around us. If anything, it appears that the more you try to hold onto your sense of structure, the more things fall between your fingers. Things seldom go as planned and our ability to foresee the future and avoid all the messy situations that might pop up is seriously limited. More often than not, the safe road we think we travel turns out to be a long chain of crossroads and steep hills. Simply put, life can be a bit of a mess.

But isn’t that the beauty of it? Isn’t that what this is all about?

The best thing about unexpectedness is that what ends up happening might turn out to be more amazing than anything you ever imagined. That sometimes you find what you are looking for, but other times you find something much greater than that. If there’s something that our life definitely never seems to lack, it’s surprises, many and all kinds of them. From the obstacles to all the adventures it throws at you, it’s all a crazy ride that takes you places you never thought possible. And when you let go of trying to control it and decide to enjoy the view, the feeling, it turns out to be better than any definition of perfect you were holding on to.

Rasheed Ogunlaru, life coach and speaker, said that “there are ultimately two choices in life: to fight it or to embrace it” and it might amaze you what you’ll manage to find when you do finally decide to embrace it, with everything that comes with it.

Take the missteps, the mishaps, the laughter and the love and carry them all together, with pride and ease. Take what’s thrown at you and make it into something better than any elaborate plan you might have had. Take every single day as it comes, enjoying every moment of it knowing that it’s part of something bigger and greater than we’re able to see.

And most importantly, make sure that, from time to time, you remind yourself and those around you that this life can be a mess, but it’s a crazy beautiful mess and there’s nothing more amazing than being truly alive to witness it all.