Wear Life Like a Loose Garment

“Wear the world like a loose garment, which touches us in a few places and there lightly”.  St Francis of Assisi.

This AA saying is the only one that conjures up a physical release, a change in sensation of the body and mind. It allows us to create a peaceful space for ourselves, separated from the incessant incoming arrows of uncertainty, fear, anger, unmet needs and other painful perceptions. For this what is painful—perceptions.  To wear the world as a loose garment is to perceive things as something the world and life will always press at us and around us, but do not have to touch us but “lightly”. Most things are either outside our control or ultimately unimportant.  We do not need to grasp, manage, dwell on or react to everything that happens to us, but can choose to keep the “world” at an emotional distance as we do the next right thing. It is an attitude that can relax the body and relieve the mind of poisonous emotions when confronted with people, places or things that beset us.

To be in the world but not of it, to live and move through life without being emotionally attached to everything that happens, is to wear the world lightly and be at peace.