please don't fix it

The unbidden prayer rose up this morning, "please, don't fix it."

I'm a guy and, as such, am as prone as the next guy to fixing stuff ... guys are given to creating the messes (think war as one example) they then become determined to fix. I suppose women are similarly inclined, but I know less about them.

"Please don't fix it."

Or, if the knee-jerk inclination to fix it is too strong, at least create a little more room in which to honor and investigate that which seems to require fixing.

In the practice of Buddhism, for example, there is often a delight when first encountering the notion of "attachment" -- the attachment that forms a foundation for sorrow and discontent. "Ah-ha!" the mind says ... and then proceeds, in little matters and large, to ameliorate or eradicate the culprit.

Even before the problem is genuinely appreciated, the guy-thing fixer-upper goes to work.

"Please don't fix it."

Isn't it true -- I think it is -- that in honoring and investigating any problem, the solution wells up unbidden? And if this is so, then fixing things is more ego trip than anything else.

It may be hard, after so many years of bolstering the habit, to restrain the knee-jerk, fix-it inclination, but I think I will give it a whirl. But since I am a novice, I see nothing wrong with a small prayer:

"Please don't fix it."