What If It All Goes Right?

In the quiet moments at the end of a yoga class, when everyone's lying in savasana, a poem was read titled, What if it all goes right. As the poem was read, detailing all the what-ifs that run in everyone's head, "What if you take that chance and it works out?... What if you’re not only enough but the perfect amount?... What if the end of that isn’t the end of you?... What if it all goes right?" my heart started to ache because the words resonated deeply with all the longing and wishing being a human has. Tears welled up and streamed down the side of my temple onto my yoga mat, because what if... it does all go right?

Too often I think, what if it all goes wrong? I've been afraid to default to anything but that because it might just jinx everything. I spend much of my waking energy as an adult in preventing things from going sideways. This default began to change when I weighed the pros/cons/ups/downs/in-betweens of quitting my practice, quitting a piece of my identity that no longer served me well. The logical path, to stay put and push through, didn't feel so good inside. So instead, I followed the feeling deep within and blew a part of my life up. It was a leap of faith, like jumping off a cliff into water that you know should be deep enough to hold you. And I'm forever grateful to have had the courage to jump.

When I was about to start my new job, with the new location, new team, new patients, and a boss, it would have been easy to put on the old fear-based, threat-scanning, safekeeping armor. I definitely had my doubts about all the new. The imposter syndrome started to brew underneath, wondering what would happen if everyone found out I'm not that impressive after all. But for some reason, I knew within, in the same place that I knew I needed to quit my practice, that this was the right thing to do; these are the right people and this is the right place to be. Trusting that it will all go right is like putting on the same pair of glasses without all the smudge marks. Seeing the same exact world, but with clean lenses not smeared with years of jadedness and fear. Every day that I work with my new office, I see and feel the good and love that is there. And again, I am grateful I took that leap that started it all.

The irony here is that though it felt right to parts of me, there were other parts that didn't trust it. This skepticism, rooted in over a decade of forecasting and staying ahead of problems at the office, became part of my working DNA. It never understood I had left that environment and was safe now. So on day two of my new job, my dreaded chronic hives started to emerge. I laughed at first, thinking it wouldn't be as bad as the previous time, but I was wrong. Three weeks of it progressively getting worse and wondering WTF is going on, sharing with close friends and Tony about my devastation, I concluded I had PTSD. All the new, however wonderful, the schedule change, however reasonable, had heightened the cortisol level in my body, and then being back in an office setting, my body was ready to fight or flight. It sounds so sad as I write this, that all the years that I enjoyed doing what I did came at this cost that I'm still paying; that I never learned how to be productive and high-functioning while keeping a healthy mental and emotional state. It's not okay, but it's also not too late to course-correct, which is what I'm aligning with for the next half of my life.

Grandma fascinated by air mattress as it self inflates. Small and ordinary can be joy if we stop to appreciate it.

In accordance with that alignment is the new outlook that all will be alright. So far, trusting that good will come of something has manifested just that outcome. Similarly, before, when I would go about life preparing for the next threat to materialize, the threats found me. The latter made me nearly blind to all the little joys in life: the smiles of an elderly couple at the grocery store, the kids who come up to ask if they can pet my dogs, my dogs crashing into me as they play while I prep food in the kitchen, my grandmother finding amusement as she witnesses a self-inflating air mattress being set up. It breaks my heart to think how much I've missed because all I did was scan the horizon for darkness. There would be glimpses of light, periods of time that felt free from danger. They would be during long vacations when my body and mind would be so engrossed with the novelty of wherever I was at that time; they would be moments on the yoga mat when all I could do was focus on breathing as life flowed through the movement of asanas; they would be when my world felt like it ended as my dogs drew their last breath and my heart squeezed all its oxygen out and I too felt like dying. As sad as death is, it is the most acute reminder of the preciousness and brevity of life. The world slowed down for months after each of their passing, during which I saw more clearly the details of leaves, their delicate and intricate patterns, the sounds of my dogs' footsteps on the pine floors, the feel of my own fingertips against my palm as I gently rubbed them together.

I no longer wait for vacations and deaths to slow down to live and see the small beautiful details of the ordinary. Instead, that's the default now; at least, that's what I am striving for each day I get to wake up. One of the meditations I do in the morning is about moments. That each moment we are in will never ever repeat again, like me writing this and you reading it for the first time. It will never happen again exactly the same as it did when we first did it. The portrait of life is made up of these little moments.

It's a practice that takes intentional effort to notice that I am living in the moments that make up my life. No longer willing to lend energy to forecasting what might go wrong, but believing the opposite; what might go right. To move through the days with the question, What if it all goes right? allows me to speak my mind, to allow myself to be me in rooms where I used to question my belonging, to be brave and manifest all the things that have gone and will go right.