We don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to\u00a0happen.<\/p>\n
This is a loaded statement for any\u00a0human being. We have trouble living in the \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d So much so, we make\u00a0up stories to fill in the void. But I\u2019ve noticed that the stories I make up are\u00a0almost always negative ones. I wonder why that is since they make me feel heavy\u00a0and doomed. Maybe it\u2019s all about programming.<\/p>\n
When I was a child and I was anticipating\u00a0something good to happen, my mother told me, \u201cDon\u2019t get excited. You might be
disappointed.\u201d I wondered why that mattered. It\u2019s as if disappointment was a\u00a0terminal illness that I would never come back from and I should avoid it at all\u00a0costs. I guess my mother was trying to save me from feeling badly, but what she\u00a0said sent me on a downward spiral before I even knew how things would turn out.
When I lost, it felt like a tragedy. When I won, I was sure that someone was\u00a0going to pull the rug out from under me.<\/p>\n
Negative stories steal our hope and\u00a0our chances of enjoying life. They lessen our ability to get back up when we\u00a0fall. There is a belief system that what we imagine is what we get, so whether\u00a0or not you believe that, why not imagine the best instead of the worst? Why not
choose to go through life feeling optimistic? Expecting failure before we get\u00a0started invites anxiety and depression into our lives. We\u2019ve been enveloped in\u00a0so much darkness for so long, its hard to trust it when we come back out. It\u2019s\u00a0hard to believe that good things can happen.<\/p>\n
I had a writing client, Elaine, who\u00a0considered herself a relationship expert. She and her husband, Brian, led three\u00a0day workshops and they claimed to know how couples could stay together. They
were the envy of their workshop participants . . . until Brian left Elaine for another\u00a0woman.<\/p>\n
Soon afterward, he wrote a book\u00a0that became a blockbuster bestseller about the differences between men and women.\u00a0Elaine was envious and she came to me to write her own book. While we worked, she gave me unsolicited relationship advice. She couldn\u2019t accept the fact that\u00a0there were things she didn\u2019t know. To my surprise, I found out she\u2019d had five relationships\u00a0and she was closing in on Number Six. She said that she knew a great deal about
coupling because she\u2019s had so many husbands.<\/p>\n
There is a Taoist story about a farmer\u00a0whose horse ran away. His neighbors said, \u201cThat\u2019s such bad luck.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe,\u201d the farmer said. \u201cI don\u2019t\u00a0know.\u201d<\/p>\n
The next morning the horse returned\u00a0with three other wild horses. The neighbors said, \u201cHow wonderful.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe,\u201d the farmer said. \u201cI don\u2019t
know.\u201d<\/p>\n
When his son tried to ride one of\u00a0the untamed horses, he was thrown and broke his leg. The neighbors said, \u201cWhat\u00a0a misfortune.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe,\u201d the farmer said. \u201cI don\u2019t\u00a0know.\u201d<\/p>\n
The next day, military officials drafted\u00a0young men from the village into the army. Seeing that the son\u2019s leg \u00a0was broken,\u00a0they passed him by. The neighbors said, \u201cYour son doesn\u2019t have to risk dying.
Things have turned out so well for you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe,\u201d the farmer said. \u201cI don\u2019t
know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Achieving this state of mind is a\u00a0lifelong process. Making room for \u201cnot knowing\u201d is important\u00a0 because we don\u2019t know the end of the story. It may be the beginning of a great adventure. Life is like that. We call it bad; we call it good. But we really don\u2019t know what\u2019s best for us.<\/p>\n
A friend once asked me, \u201cWhy do you\u00a0think we\u2019re here?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you mean here in this room or\u00a0do you mean the big \u2018here?\u2019\u201d I asked her.<\/p>\n
She spread out her arms. She was\u00a0talking about the big \u201chere\u201d and there was no way I could ever answer that\u00a0question. Life is a long journey of wins and loses. It\u2019s just the way it is.\u00a0When I was a teenager, I knew everything. Today I know next to nothing. I
thought it would be the other way around but there\u2019s a comfort in knowing that\u00a0I don\u2019t know. No one expects me to come up with answers. I\u2019m trying to face\u00a0each experience with fresh eyes and a fresh attitude and learn what I can as I\u00a0go along.<\/p>\n
There are countless things we don\u2019t\u00a0know and we never will. We can philosophize about them and try to make sense of\u00a0them but we won\u2019t come away with definitive answers because there aren\u2019t any.<\/p>\n
A Buddhist master said, \u201cA\u00a0beginner\u2019s mind is wide open and questioning. An expert\u2019s mind is closed. Not\u00a0knowing gives us vibrancy. \u201c<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to\u00a0happen. This is a loaded statement for any\u00a0human being. We have trouble living in the \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d So much so, we make\u00a0up stories to fill in the void. But I\u2019ve noticed that the stories I make up are\u00a0almost always negative ones. I wonder why that is since they make […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2655,"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-2656","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\/2656","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\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2656"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2657,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2656\/revisions\/2657"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}