Let August be August.
And let yourself
just be
even in
the uncertainty.
You don’t have to fix
everything.
You don’t have to solve
everything.
And you can still
find peace
and grow
in the wild
of changing things.
~Morgan Harper Nichols, from How Far You Have Come
My factory settings lean towards hope. Yet I’ve been catastrophizing recently, trying to find guarantees in a season of wild change.
I just hit the halfway point on my goal to live to 100. I’m going through menopause, a humbling and often comical transformation. Even with decades of listening to the whispers and frank urges of my animal form, I suddenly feel like I’m wearing a skin two sizes too small. Menopause is a second puberty, where nothing works exactly the way you’ve grown accustomed to. It’s a daily dose of humble, a new ache here, a new wrinkle there, an ever-present knock to the ego.
The hubs is having his own sort of mid-life crisis. He wonders if 50 is too late for a career change. He worries we can never afford to retire (he might be right). After a decade of bipolar remission, the meds stopped working. Anxiety and depression creep back, thieves of peace. We draw new boundaries, attempt new dance steps in the long dance that is marriage. How do I support without enabling, love without losing myself?
I will soon add empty nester to my resume, with all the stress and worry that entails sending one’s progeny out into what feels like an ever-more dangerous unknown. Parenting is just whistling past the graveyard, hoping it’s enough, worrying it probably isn’t.
Here’s a mountain of school debt! Make sure to use that rape whistle I got you because if you get assaulted, we can’t get an abortion right now! Sorry you can probably never afford to own a home, but with climate change, there’s no safe place to live anyway! Hope the deep breathing and antidepressants help some!
Pretty bleak, right? No wonder I’ve been running from the moment.
So I cast runes and contemplate their landing, projecting every what if while rushing headlong toward the worst conclusions. I preach the importance of presence on a psychological, spiritual, and emotional level, yet find myself dread-forecasting tomorrow in an ill-planned attempt to wrestle control. If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail. If tomorrow is an unknowable risk, I will plan out all the ways it might go wrong and how I will respond.
Maybe Tom Petty was right. The waiting is the hardest part. Waiting means sitting with uncertainty and our brains aren’t designed to do that well. We want certitude. Assurances.
Our hearts and minds are socially toggled toward the next thing; we’re rewarded for planning, doing, arranging.
But all this planning and prepping is only making it worse. My cells cry this truth, begging me to return to right now, where, if only in this moment, I have everything I truly need.
Let August be August. September will come in time, and sooner than we think. That’s how it works. I don’t have to fix it all now. The belief I could anyway is just another illusion, a mind trick.
I whisper it again, a talisman of hope, a soul reminder. You can still find peace and grow in the wild of changing things.
