{"id":62798,"date":"2024-04-08T10:58:33","date_gmt":"2024-04-08T14:58:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.szpin.ca\/?p=62798"},"modified":"2024-04-08T11:02:03","modified_gmt":"2024-04-08T15:02:03","slug":"thoughts-saying-yes-to-whatever-comes-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.szpin.ca\/thoughts-saying-yes-to-whatever-comes-next\/","title":{"rendered":"THOUGHTS: Saying yes to whatever comes next"},"content":{"rendered":"

Source: Ask Polly, Heather Havrilesky<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"You could be missing out on a lot of life if you are a nay sayer, quick to say ‘NO’ to anyone and any thing. Read the following reading to get a new perspective on saying ‘YES’ rather than ‘NO.’<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cKierkegaard, in\u00a0Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing<\/em>, describes complete absorption in God as the deepest unity in life. All ambivalence would disappear and competing interests would be reconciled.\u201d \u2014 Erving and Miriam Polster,\u00a0Gestalt Therapy Integrated<\/em><\/p>\n

Last night I read these words in a hotel room in Dayton, Ohio. My sister was in the queen bed next to mine, reading a witty and suspenseful seafaring novel that I\u2019m pretty sure she\u2019s read a few times before. My mother was at an Airbnb a few miles away with two of her lifelong friends, probably telling each other the same stories they\u2019ve repeated for years now. \u00a0<\/p>\n

We\u2019re all in town to see the total eclipse.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t care that much about eclipses. I wouldn\u2019t personally choose to drive 16 hours round-trip just to watch the world go dark for a few minutes. I said yes because it seemed important to say yes. My sister was also on the fence, but she decided it was important, too.<\/p>\n

So now we\u2019re in Ohio. Unfortunately, the clouds might be a problem. This morning I woke up at 5 am to look at the weather forecast on three different apps. I read some pretty damning reviews of the \u201ccastle\u201d one hour north of Dayton where my mom and her friends want to watch the eclipse. Those ladies might be hard to dissuade. Last night, they seemed determined to pack sandwiches and leave early and drive in traffic for an hour, just to sit in an open field next to a collapsing, leaky castle and a few porta potties.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m starting to worry. I\u2019m sending screenshots of cloud coverage to my mother, but I keep getting little red NOT DELIVERED messages back each time.<\/p>\n

Finally, I decide to get my running clothes out of the car, so I can go for a run and maybe calm down. Yesterday my sister and I ran ten miles along the Miami River. Today\u2019s run will be shorter but maybe it will help.<\/p>\n

On the way through the hotel parking lot, I see a sign on a rearview mirror that says:<\/p>\n

PRAY LESS, WORRY MORE.<\/p>\n

Right on.\u00a0<\/em>I think.\u00a0Couldn\u2019t agree more!<\/em><\/p>\n

Then I look again. I misread it. It actually says:<\/p>\n

PRAY MORE, WORRY LESS.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Sometimes I treat ambivalence and worry as a kind of religion. \u201cIf I worry enough about this turbulence, \u00a0this plane won\u2019t crash.\u201d \u201cIf I research the weather enough, we\u2019ll find the perfect spot to watch the eclipse.\u201d \u201cIf I indulge my ambivalence about every person, place, and thing I encounter, I\u2019ll sort through all of my conflicting feelings enough to understand myself completely.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ironically, I was reading\u00a0Gestalt Therapy Integrated\u00a0<\/em>last night because I\u2019ve been trying to evaluate my Gestalt-trained therapist\u2019s approach \u2014 instead of, you know, just showing up to therapy and talking about my feelings like a normal person. So when I landed on those sentences about Kierkegaard and \u201ccomplete absorption in God,\u201d I found myself taking a deep breath.<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t that the\u00a0<\/em>real\u00a0point of being alive?\u00a0<\/em>I thought.\u00a0Not to analyze and overthink everything, but to allow yourself to be utterly consumed by the divine!<\/em><\/p>\n

Non-believers like me see the word\u00a0pray<\/em>\u00a0and we think it means \u201cAsk some imaginary man in the sky for favors.\u201d So we take \u201cPray more, worry less,\u201d to mean \u201cGet the big bossman upstairs to give you what you want like\u00a0I<\/em>\u00a0did, and then maybe you won\u2019t be such a stress case!\u201d<\/p>\n

But when you think of prayer as\u00a0fostering a deep connection with everything that\u2019s divine<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 which for me includes the natural world and other people and animals and all of the strange, invisible forces that you can sense without understanding them completely \u2014 those words change.<\/p>\n

PRAY MORE, WORRY LESS<\/p>\n

means<\/p>\n

Turn down your neurotic thoughts and attune yourself to the real magic around you.<\/em><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what this eclipse trip is\u00a0really<\/em>\u00a0about.<\/p>\n

My mom started planning it more than a year ago. I was always on the fence. Nothing about her plans sounded that great. I had my doubts about the hotel she booked. I kept picturing unwanted clouds and hours of gridlock.<\/p>\n

But there are times when indulging your doubts gets you nowhere. Ambivalence is just another form of hiding in plain sight, a way of keeping yourself safe from everything you can\u2019t control. Sometimes worrying is just another defense mechanism, a method of shielding yourself from disappointment, a strategy for remaining untouched by the unknown.<\/p>\n

Prayer pays homage to the unknown. Praying is a way of saying yes to what\u2019s important, a way of going hours out of your way to honor someone else\u2019s wishes, a way of clearing space for magic to enter your life.<\/p>\n

Praying is letting the outside world under your skin. Today\u2019s eclipse \u2014 partial or total, clouds or no clouds \u2014 offers a chance for us to do that, to drop everything and walk outside and attune ourselves to the natural world and the people around us. Try to treat it as a kind of prayer \u2014 like reading the same seafaring novel again and again, like repeating the same childhood stories to your lifelong friends, like running for miles along a wide, muddy river, like saying yes without knowing what you\u2019re saying yes to.<\/p>\n

It feels good to say\u00a0YES!<\/em>\u00a0without a single hint of\u00a0NO!<\/em>\u00a0in your voice, even when you don\u2019t know why you\u2019re doing it. It feels good to align yourself with the divine, even when you don\u2019t always know what that means. All ambivalence disappears, and competing interests are reconciled.<\/span><\/p>\n

Suddenly you realize that you don\u2019t have to know more. In fact, accepting that you\u2019ll never know enough is a way of yielding yourself to the enchantment of the universe.<\/p>\n

So today, turn down the noise and the worries and pray to what you don\u2019t know. Pray to the darkening sky and the encroaching clouds. Pray to the old ladies chattering about colanders and castles, pin holes and packed sandwiches. Surrender to the real magic around you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source: Ask Polly, Heather Havrilesky You could be missing out on a lot of life if you are a nay sayer, quick to say ‘NO’ to anyone and any thing. Read the following reading to get a new perspective on … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1034],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1-thoughts"],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"THOUGHTS: Saying yes to whatever comes next : The Szpinner<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.szpin.ca\/thoughts-saying-yes-to-whatever-comes-next\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"THOUGHTS: Saying yes to whatever comes next : The Szpinner\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Source: Ask Polly, Heather Havrilesky You could be missing out on a lot of life if you are a nay sayer, quick to say ‘NO’ to anyone and any thing. 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