EXPECT THE BEST<\/p>\n
When I was a young ballet dancer in training, we were about
to have a recital. We were doing a version of Alice in Wonderland and I wanted\u00a0to be Alice. My hair was long and blonde like hers, I was the right age and I\u00a0imagined wearing a blue pinafore costume and black ballet shoes that looked\u00a0like Mary Janes with a strap across my instep. But when I eagerly told my\u00a0mother I thought I was going to get the part, she turned to me with a grim\u00a0expression on her face and said, \u201cDon’t get excited. You might get\u00a0disappointed.\u201d It felt like she had dumped a pail of cold water on my head and I\u00a0became filled with doubt. I had my first experience of political favoritism\u00a0when another girl won the role after her parents had donated a large sum of\u00a0money to the school. It broke my heart and I was deeply disappointed, but it\u00a0didn\u2019t kill me. I had enjoyed being excited and I rallied and carried on.<\/p>\n
Being disappointed is not a terminal disease. It\u2019s part of being\u00a0human. Trying to avoid it is like putting on a suit of armor and going numb as\u00a0it shuts out the good and the bad and leaves us anticipating the worst. Hoping\u00a0for the best has been a rare commodity during this last year. We can’t deny\u00a0that things are changing for the better, but expecting the worst has become a lingering\u00a0habit. It seems like every day, something else in the world breaks down and leaves\u00a0us disappointed and afraid. We\u2019ve been isolated for so long, being out in\u00a0public and seeing more than a few people at a time feels scary. Rhoni, a\u00a0vaccinated friend, told me she went to the Grove Shopping Mall recently and\u00a0maneuvering the crowds of people there felt like an onslaught.<\/p>\n
A woman I know called me in a panic yesterday. She had seen\u00a0a conspiracy theory video that claimed the vaccine would kill her. They called\u00a0it a hoax, they had statements from obscure doctors who warned people that the\u00a0shot would change their DNA permanently and it was a way for the government to put\u00a0a chip in their bodies so they could control the masses. She was torn. Her ailing\u00a0mother and stepfather had gotten the vaccine and so had most of her friends.\u00a0She didn’t want to put her mother in danger when they visited, but every time\u00a0she thought about getting vaccinated, she started to cry. I suggested\u00a0that it\u00a0was better than getting Covid, and if she really wanted to immunize herself, she could allow her fear to be there and
get vaccinated at the same time.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to let go of the fear that has been a part of our\u00a0foundation for over a year. I was invited to a small dinner party last week and
when we sat down outside, took off our masks and started to eat, I felt like I\u00a0was doing something wrong. I had to keep reminding myself that there were only\u00a0five of us, we had all gotten two shots, we were taking the proper precautions\u00a0by social distancing and by the end of the evening, it felt like a modicum of \u201clife\u00a0before Covid\u201d was coming back.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not suggesting that we ignore our fear, repress it or chase\u00a0it away. We have to feel what we feel but we don’t have to wallow in it and become\u00a0paralyzed. It brings to mind the book by Susan Jeffers, \u201cFeel the Fear and Do\u00a0It Anyway.\u201d Fear doesn\u2019t have to stop us. This period of great trials will end.\u00a0Everything does, and I\u2019m encouraging myself to expect the best. If I get\u00a0disappointed, it won’t kill me and I\u2019ll try again. It\u2019s certainly better than\u00a0being pessimistic and afraid all the time and just maybe, expecting the best might\u00a0make it so.<\/p>\n
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EXPECT THE BEST When I was a young ballet dancer in training, we were aboutto have a recital. We were doing a version of Alice in Wonderland and I wanted\u00a0to be Alice. My hair was long and blonde like hers, I was the right age and I\u00a0imagined wearing a blue pinafore costume and black ballet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1892,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}