I read contracts every single day. My eyes scan them like a hawk surveys the landscape searching for food. Previewing the horizon, swooping in at times, always on guard. I can zone in on a small thing and go after it. It’s a core part of my job to spot areas of high risk to my clients and find out a way to lessen that risk. Can this provision come back and hurt you later? Are you protecting yourself well enough? If something bad happens, will you be covered? Basically I’m the what-if person of any large major business transaction. Then I write and edit ways to lessen this risk. Day in and day out I do this. It is my income and my livelihood. But unlike a hawk I have terrible vision and can only fly in my dreams.
That’s a funny concept, being well protected. It’s a fiction, really, since life is full of sharp edges and corners and elbows. You can have life insurance but it doesn’t make death easier on your family. Or the insurance doesn’t cover what you think, or you leave everything to your husband but he dies in a car wreck. You can have a retirement account but it doesn’t guarantee financial security. You can have a husband and two kids but it doesn’t necessarily equal happiness. You can try to do everything right as a wife but find out your husband wasn’t faithful, or as a mother but your kid tries drugs anyway. You quickly realize that you don’t own or control other people’s states of mind or their decisions, and you simply can’t mitigate all the things all the time.
And that’s annoying as hell. Where are life’s redlines when you need them? Where are the exit clauses and penalties?
It’s a hard lesson for me. I wish I could place in a lot more protections. We do this in a way by exercising, going to therapy, creating positive networks and friendships, creating wills and trusts, setting up bank accounts, forming mental contingency plans, and buying expensive face creams. But in the end, it’s meaningless. We lose out on living life because we are so worried the risks will overtake us and we’ll be left unprepared and unready and unkempt. I drove my kids to school in pajamas the other day, so I suppose I’m living out my fears.
This weekend I was almost crushed by anxiety. To the point where I was unable to speak at times, just focusing on the task immediately in front of me. Decorating a Christmas package, eating a cookie, buying a new sweater, getting up from a chair, pushing the button on the remote control, drinking water. If you asked me if I was okay, I was not. But I knew that there was no choice but to push through to the other side of that fear, because this is what life is, a field of distracting and competing forces. You are a hawk flying over an entire field of mice, and the amount of things you can zone in on are exhausting and overwhelming. Which mouse to kill, which one to leave alone, which one to follow to a hole, which are diseased, which are not really mice but something you can’t even eat. Maybe there are just rocks that are not even moving and you feel like you’re losing your mind. Your eyes dance wildly over the field, scanning and swooping and all you’re doing is tiring yourself out.
Sometimes you just have to sit for a while and catch your breath. Tuck in your wings and close your eyes. Imagine that for today, you’re taken care of. You have what you need. You don’t need to plan for every single contingency. Take stock in the fact that it’s not yours to control, and your worry changes nothing. You don’t have to know the truth of what others think. Perhaps you just need to not care or know anything at all. Except that right now you’re walking down the street and feeling the warmth of the sun or feeling the hot tea in your mouth with the sweet touch of honey. You let it roll down your throat and you use your legs to sit in a chair with cushions, and you close your eyes and simply feel breath fueling your body, love of God the Father inside of your bones, the love you don’t deserve beating inside of you, the way clothes rest on your body to provide a trap for the heat to stay close, the dog curled up at your feet.
We can’t catch all the mice. We can’t edit our lives. We have to sometimes just fly, soaring over the waterfalls and the canyons and catching the light of the sun before it escapes beyond the ridge. We feel the air under our wings as it carries us and lifts us higher, and we breathe in deep the world around us – the Garden of Eden we have been given. And we can be at peace. You can catch a mouse tomorrow, because today you’re eating a hamburger with bacon.
And that’s okay for now. It’s more than okay. It’s wonderful. Because after all, who doesn’t love bacon? You’re a human, not a hawk. With a soul and a sense of compassion. A heart filled with curiosity and wonder. And the ability to stop yourself when things get too much. Letting go is a great gift, taking the weights off and setting the editing pen down. Sometimes you just have to taste the salt on your tongue and relish in it for a while.
Then swallow. Tomorrow is another day. Just keep on flying.
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