I spent the week-end asking myself questions. There is nothing like concern for someone you love to make you pound the “what if ” keys like a heavy metal rocker…
It was certainly noisy in there
Desiring peace, I leant on my new incense habit until my hair smelt like a gypsy.
Realising that it was all becoming a bit overwhelming (when the dog moved downstairs sneezing) I tried to take a step back and gain some perspective.
Because we are bought into these situations to learn are we not?
And if we don’t learn we have to attend the lesson again and again somewhere down the track until we do.
No thanks, I’m tired of worry spirals.
So I looked at the “what ifs” and every time the “what if” bought me a scary answer, I switched it to ask a different question.
What if he is .,,,
What if he is not.:.:
What if this occurs
Ahh but what if something bloody marvellous does
What if he is having a fabulous time
What if he ends up in jail
What if he ends up discovered for a movie?
(Equally plausible 😂😂)
What if he drinks so much he has to get his stomach pumped?
What if falls out the window?
What if he misses his plane?
What if he falls in love with a Dutch backpacker and moves to Holland?
Oh that’s right Covid
What if he finds his soul mate?
What if he bumps into Aunty Pen?
That would be nice wouldn’t it?
Unless he is drunk and says something inappropriate …
Scratch that – where were we?
What if he goes snorkelling and decides to move to Cairns to become a dive instructor – awesome – what a great life!
What if he gets left behind because they don’t do a head count and and he is eaten by sharks ….it’s happened ..
What if ..
What I found was that my nervous system didn’t know the difference between imagined fear and imagined joy or even just curiosity
We don’t know what could happen in the next minutes and hours
Could be something awful or indeed it could be something amazing
And if we don’t know then imagining the worst only leads to making us miserable and flooding our system with cortisol
I think I’ve learnt this lesson now
Thanks Universe, I’m turning in my homework – feel free to grade me
….
I wonder if I passed?
I wonder if I failed?
I wonder…
Fabulous
Thanks Athira 😊
I really like this. A reminder that we really cannot tell bad circumstances from good or how they are both inter-connected. Not that that always gets rid of worry, but it does tamp it down some. Maybe something that looks so horrendous right now is paving the way for the ultimate good. (And of course, things we think are good might not really be all that good, either–a cautionary tale). So it’s about getting some level of peace (your incense yoga) regardless of the circumstances. I’ve been working very hard on that! In one of my short stories: A man wins the lottery (good thing?), his wife blows it all gambling at the casino (bad thing?), the man has a heart attack while screaming at her and ends up in the hospital (bad thing?)–his house burns down by a faulty wire in the middle of the night while he’s in the hospital (bad thing or good thing? or both?) his wife ultimately divorces him but when he’s down paying the friend of the court for his child support, his new wife approaches him and his life has taken yet another turn! Actually I think in my linked stories, I tell this slightly differently. But your piece reminded me that that’s what I really believe and somewhere there is someplace to balance my focus on the head of a pin. Or hinpin, I probably have that reference all wrong. But trying to remember this every day is the key….
Wondering up or wondering down, we control the direction or can at least try. Your short stories sound great Lynn – I used to write a couple a week and really enjoyed the process of bringing a character/s to life (and then perhaps killing them off – ahhh alas 😁) our lives are just short stories really in the grand scheme of things and we are the narrators so the trick is to make it a good one.
A very introspective weekend! I hope you and yours are ok. Stay well Kate! 🙂 🙂
I know that kind of spiraling what ifs. Hope that it all works out for the best.
Oh it was fine Rosaliene, just me and my head – amazing the torture we can put ourselves through wondering.
Always welcome
Wow! So true and poignant!