on grasping & figuring it out

While driving home from work two days ago, I had a very interesting thought chain, which I wanted to capture, so I turned on my voice recording app, and here’s what I came up with:

The thought is centered around this idea that I have a really grasping tendency, the origin of which I don’t know, whether it’s due to my personality, or if grasping is simply a human tendency. If perhaps finite beings tend to face their terror of the unknown by grasping…

I was thinking about how with my imagination — which can be used for good or for bad; imagination is just a powerful tool built into all people — I imagine the future, and I think about scenarios I want to happen, and I cling to them.

Because I can’t truly picture what comes next. I can’t travel through time. I can’t read the future, I can’t predict what’s going to happen to me, I can’t predict how everything will unfold next in my story and how I will handle it.

So I imagine, and I get attached to an idea. I think to myself, “This would be a good outcome, that would be a bad outcome,” (maybe, maybe not!) and of course, I’m attached to the good outcome.

In my grasping, sometimes I cling on to that good outcome and get flighty or panicky about trying to ensure I can make it happen and not let it slip through my fingers. That’s the grasping: I visually picture hands, reaching, reaching, reaching, grabbing, grabbing, grabbing, trying to hold on as something slips away or maybe comes true, and you don’t know! You can’t know. It’s in the future, so of course you can’t know yet.

That’s what sets the stage for this recognition…

That tendency, that fear — it’s just fear! It’s just fear of the unknown. It’s an effort to control because we believe if we fret, if we worry, we’ll be ahead of the game.

We think worry is a tool, you know? We think worry yields some power in some way. That if we’re busy worrying, we’re doing something.

Worry is not effective. Worry is not productive. Worry does not equal doing something. Worry is just a state of anxiety — prolonged anxiety. Keeping yourself in this pent up frame of mind and energy zone, with zero helpful results, believing that hopefully your worry is doing something to help you grasp, right? To help you cling to that future that you want. Or believing that the worrying is doing something to help you avoid what you don’t want.

And that’s just not true. That is not how it works.

So, keeping in mind, worry is not a productive tool or a useful approach, thinking about this whole combination, and thinking about what I would want to have happen, I sort of flashed back in my mind, into the past, and reflected on situations I’ve wanted to leave before… there were times in my past when, of course, right now was the future back then. I pictured what I wanted to have happen, and then considered the things that have happened that I wanted, the things I wanted that didn’t happen, and the things I have now that I am beyond thrilled to have, but I didn’t even foresee coming. Things I didn’t know I should want, things I couldn’t picture then, imaginings I couldn’t drum up.

That’s the adventure of life: sometimes you get precisely what you wanted, sometimes you don’t, and sometimes what you get is beyond your wildest imaginings, which wasn’t what you wanted but is even better.

In thinking about that grasping for the future, I involuntarily flashed back through my past into thinking about previous times in my experiences and the story of my life, when I felt stuck in a situation I didn’t want to be in anymore, when I felt I had outgrown it, when I wanted a season to end so I could move onto the next thing.

Immediately this very reassuring thought came to my mind, and it had a very soothing effect which calmed me instantly.

In every one of those scenarios in the past, I have found a way to close the season and to move on. In every one of those experiences in the past where I have felt stuck and like I had outgrown something, I have figured it out. I’ve carved a path for myself to do something else. To find a solution, whether it was something I’d always wanted or something I’d never thought of before. Whether it was closing my studio, leaving Starbucks, leaving my latest job… just so many different things… I have always found a way forward.

Which made me realize: if worrying is not a productive tool in the first place, if it’s not doing anything we like to trick ourselves into believing it is doing (meaning the grasping isn’t useful!), AND I feel these sort of certain ways about the future outcomes I think I want, maybe there is no reason at all to worry about them and every reason to look at the track record of previous dreams, hopes, wishes, and challenges and notice how I have traversed them all so far. We have each gotten ourselves here. We can take ourselves all the way. So we can know: everything that comes in the future will be figure-out-able, too, whatever it is, whether we get what we want right now or not.

There are a lot of things I have now that I didn’t used to think I wanted or wasn’t able to imagine, and now I’m loving them. I’m thriving with them.

So it was really comforting for me to think about how things unfolding in my life that I don’t expect, and every time that’s happened so far, I have figured it out. I have kept going, and it has made a fantastic story so far. Every experience has stacked up into something valuable and beautiful along the way. I’m grateful for all of it.

It was comforting to me to realize sometimes the things I’ve really badly wanted have been amazing, and sometimes they’ve expired or I’ve outgrown them more quickly than I expected, which means the same could happen to anything in my life now or in the future. And it will be okay. It was okay then, it can be okay (and good!) again. Change is constant.

There are elements I’m imagining now for my future, details I’m clinging and grasping to, things I’m worried about having slip through my fingers, pieces I’m experiencing now that I’m already worried will end or that I won’t be able to keep them or figure them out. For example, I worry I won’t be able to keep this job I have now that I LOVE, grow with it, make more money, promote with it, enjoy it, develop it into a role I’m really stoked about… AND ALSO become a mom. I want to be a stay-at-home mom (at least part time, at least in some capacity), and I want to have babies and be with my babies. I worry about that a lot, and it’s not time to worry about that. I’m not pregnant. I’m not even trying to get pregnant. I don’t want to have a baby tomorrow or next year, necessarily. Soon, maybe. I don’t know. I can’t know yet! I fret about it too much.

I am realizing (perhaps for the millionth time, perhaps on a new layer) this grasping and what if, what if, what if — that clinging isn’t doing me any good; that worrying isn’t productive. I am realizing IF I want this job, and it’s time for me to be a mom, I’ll figure it out. IF it becomes time for me to be a mom, and that just naturally transitions into a desire for this season to end so I can move into that season, possibly meaning I’ll outgrow this job at some point, I can figure that out too. Maybe this will end, just as other things in my life have ended. They were right to end. They were right to begin, right to enjoy along the way, and they came to a natural, well-timed ending. No need to prematurely mourn outcomes we cannot even guarantee. I don’t know how I will feel about all of this in a year or two or five. I do not regret the turns I’ve taken so far, and I don’t wish myself back in the chapters that have already closed, so why would I waste time now worrying that this current chapter is going to end, too? Maybe, maybe not! Maybe I will be ready for it to. Maybe it will keep going and morph as it goes. Maybe there’s something brand new just past the horizon that I have no scope for yet.

No matter what happens — whether something ends or goes on, whether I want to keep it don’t, whether I live two dreams at the same time or not, for this example and for anything else in my life — no matter what happens, same as every other experience so far, I AM GOING TO FIGURE IT OUT.

And I don’t have to figure it out right now.

And that might seem really simple. But what a powerful, freeing, calming thought to have faith and belief in yourself and to know you will be okay, come what may.

It may seem reductive to some, but in a grasping state of mind, for someone worrying about the future, overachieving, trying to project the illusion of control for themselves onto their own life, this is hard to see sometimes.

So as that realization dawned on me, on my drive home, it was very reassuring, empowering, and calming.

I have figured out everything in my past so far. Whatever the right timing is, whether it’s staying or going, continuing or outgrowing, whatever comes, anything that’s next… I will figure this out too.