Where did we get the idea that life is supposed to be safe? What joy of any significance has ever been safe? Giving birth to a child? Taking a road trip? Kissing that dark rogue stranger? Funding a grassroots venture to benefit the world?
There is no risk-free life. Staying inside in your bed is a risk. Taking the bus is a risk. Staying in a marriage or job that crushes your soul but isn’t “that bad” is a risk. There is no opting out of taking risks in this lifetime. You only get to choose which risk you’ll take.
And my best rocket-fuel expert tip here? Or at least the one at the tip of my tongue?
Bet on the sure thing. Bet on love. Spend your chits on faith. Take the road that makes you stronger. Going after things you want, whether or not you get them, makes you stronger.
A life of thriving requires us to choose between the illusion of safety and the ultimate safety.
The ultimate safety is the life that calls you. Sometimes, you don’t even know what you feel drawn to do. Sometimes, you only have exhausting questions. Well, then start here: Begin to move away from whatever steals your spirit.
Let me tell you a story about walking in the direction that seemed more immediately uncomfortable. It wasn’t an easy choice. But I’m a logical girl, and choosing life is always a smart call.
Many years ago, I went hiking with a long-haired poetic boyfriend, somewhere in the wilds of Oregon. We scampered along the trail for hours, in the cool green of the forest. Then, we practically fell to our knees and sang the gospel upon seeing the Pacific Ocean at the end of the trail. This is what happens when you live in landlocked Colorado. At the first sight of a body of water, you act like puppies. Giddy as we were, we ignored the time. The sun gradually evaporated from the sky. This wasn’t good. It was a time of year that turned very cold once the sun had set.
Just like that, we realized we were in danger.
We’d both dressed lightly, in shorts and T-shirts. We hadn’t intended to hike this far. We had no camping supplies, jackets, pants, or milk chocolate, so, really, I couldn’t see how we were going to survive. The moment we saw that draining sun, we started hightailing it on the trail back to the car.
The light grew dimmer. We walked faster. My lawyer brain kicked in, seeing possible liabilities everywhere, which is oh so helpful when your heart is already pounding so fast you know the vultures are taking dibs on your body and choosing a wine. Then halfway out of the forest, we heard an unusual knocking noise. A flock of birds squawked and fluttered away. They left a hollowness in their wake. Something didn’t feel right. Something didn’t feel right at all.
The creepy, unsettling noise continued. “Maybe it’s a moose,” said Kir eagerly, looking around. He was one of those people who thinks seeing wildlife is a good thing. He stopped and dawdled. Type A to the core, I power walked ahead and peered into the trees. I saw darkness behind them, almost a blackness. Then in the hideous slow motion of terror, I realized that the darkness was not some nice woodsy, amorphous darkness, but rather a shape peering at me, the shape of a bear.
Now, for the record, I am not the type of woman who looks at a bear in fascination, even at a zoo. I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. On my best day, I am way more comfortable pressed up against a thousand sweaty strangers in a subway car than witnessing firsthand actual wildlife in a forest. But I was a long way from Brooklyn. And I was a slice of pizza to that bear.
I instinctively walked backward on the trail, cautiously, like a cartoon character. Then I ran farther back until I was at a distance where I could imagine breathing. Kir followed me, wondering what was going on. “It’s a bear,” I said to him, terror and adrenaline lighting up my senses. “It’s a goddamn bear.” As though there were any other kind.
Then our negotiations began. We started realizing the horrible Zen predicament of it all.
We had to walk back past the bear to get out of the woods.
We had to walk in the direction of our fears.
Because it just so happened, as it always seems to do, that the direction of our fears was also the direction of our freedom. If we walked the other way, nightfall would set in, bringing its wet ocean breath of cold and death by hypothermia. We were already beginning to shiver.
I imagined being mauled. Hypothermia sounded nice, just going numb forever. I really wanted to avoid that bear. I’m not big on facing things I can’t predict or control and knowing they have the upper hand, with claws, no less. But then if we avoided that scenario, we were facing the guarantee of a slow, insidious death.
Believe me, the symbolic choice here was not lost on me. At the time, I had only recently left my nine-hundred-hour-a-week legal career to dare my “crazy” dreams of becoming a writer. I had left the “safe” position because I knew it was numbing and annihilating my heart minute by minute. The comfort of that paycheck and validation was seducing me into a stupor in which I abandoned my will and lapsed into a menacing indifference about my own life. It was the hypothermia of having my heart go cold.
But in that scenario, I had decided to fight to save my own life. I chose the terror of a creative, unpredictable, alive life. I faced the immediate risk of not knowing how things would work out. I felt exposed and naked.
Yet I also knew that at least now I possessed the chance of something working out. My job had been “safe” in cliché worldly terms. But I knew I had not one shred of hope of living my True Life while there. I was unequivocally dying every single day. It wasn’t imminent, savage death. But it was certain death.
It hit me then that I would have to walk in the direction of my fear. I would have to walk toward the bear. If I walked by the bear, I might make it to total freedom. It held the only possibility of what I really wanted. I’d at least have a chance at life. But I’d have to walk by that bear. I’d have to risk unbearable (no pun intended) uncertainty.
So, yeah, the fact that I’m writing this is a spoiler alert. I lived. We walked by the bear, slowly, praying silently to ourselves and to the God you pull out of your back pocket when you hope there is a God and you hope he texts. We surrendered to the vulnerability of our desires and the purity of our instincts. Then we ran like hell and, if memory serves, I kissed that rental car’s thin tin sides.
That night we ate at a local diner and I told the waitress about the bear and how happy I was to be alive. I have no doubt I sounded like someone who had just seen a UFO. She gave us french fries on the house. I have never tasted better french fries. I know they were probably wilted with grease, ordinary, or even too salty. But I was alive—and everything tasted alive to me.
I suggest you walk by your bear.
“Sometimes finding love or even the hope of it . . . requires you to move, voluntarily, further into uncertainty.”
What action or direction calls to you right now, but might leave you bare or unprotected? Where do you have the best chance of at least moving toward something you desire? A preference for certainty costs too much. There are no guarantees in anything. But love will find you when you go in the right direction. And love is safety.
The right direction can take a while. It’s worth it. It’s the right direction. A sense of integrity is a security all its own; it feels solid to know you are walking your truth. It doesn’t matter if it isn’t as convenient as Amazon shipping, as few things really are. You don’t need to have sound bites or even words yet to describe what you’re doing; maybe you don’t even know.
Maybe you are crawling away from certain soul death. That’s all you need to know. It’s worth anything to be moving in the direction of your true possibilities, desires, or growth. This is the purpose of life. And only you can make this sloppy, dangerous, awe-inspired choice.
Pulitzer Prize–winning author Norman Mailer put it this way: “Every moment of one’s existence, one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit.”
It�
�s okay to be afraid. It’s okay to be uncertain. I’m just hoping that you’ll choose a direction that makes you feel as though you are staying true to yourself. Because sometimes the dedication to comfort is more perilous than pursuing the mystery.
Recently I read these words from the iconic actor Alan Alda, and I just knew he’d walked by the bear: “You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can’t get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you’re doing. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover will be yourself.”
I have faith in your aspirations and in you. You will make your right choice in your right time. There will always be a bear. And there will always be that within you that can bear anything on its way to magnificence.
TURNING POINTS:
Any Choice Is a Risk, Except the Right One
The need for constant control causes boredom, exhaustion, and hollowness. Your spirit craves growth, and growth comes from taking risks.
Choose a life of meaning. . . . Meaning is the only security in town.
Sometimes finding love or even the hope of it . . . requires you to move, voluntarily, further into uncertainty.
Bet on the sure thing. Bet on love. Spend your chits on faith.
Take the road that makes you stronger. Going after things you want, whether or not you get them, makes you stronger.
Choose between the illusion of safety and the ultimate safety. The ultimate safety is the life that calls you.
Love will find you when you go in the right direction. And love is safety.
The right direction can take a while. It’s worth it. It’s the right direction.
YOU ARE JUST ONE THOUGHT AWAY FROM A MIRACLE
A sloppy mind is no way to create a happy life. If I’m lost in a burning house, I don’t want a bellowing, scattered drama queen like my fearful mind leading the way.
TAMA KIEVES (journal entry)
Your entire life is based on the thoughts you choose. The thoughts you choose are more important than the school you attend, the job you get, the wealth in your bank account, the talents you have, the love of your family, or the health of your body.
TAMA KIEVES (from A Year Without Fear)
I don’t know about you, lamb chop, but I am a ninja of freedom—one who is dedicated to the right use of mind. That means I slice and dice the thoughts that distract or weaken me. Now, it’s not because I’m so together. It’s probably because I’m not—and an uncertain life is just way too unsettling with an unsupervised mind.
At the first hint of uncertainty, I turn into Zen Special Ops (though I don’t formally practice Zen) and my life becomes my meditation. Because I know I’m either going to focus on thoughts and observations that empower me or I’m going to a dungeon of terror that a part of me calls “being realistic”—though it just so happens to be the darkest room in my mind. This is the gauntlet uncertainty throws down. Wake up and smell the focus.
Uncertainty is going to happen. But crazy-town and electric violins are optional.
You can always choose how you experience any experience. And if you want an incredible life—which I know you do—you must choose how you experience your experience. Because your response to your life is your life.
“I am flipping out right now,” said Carol. Her doctor had just performed a biopsy on a vaguely suspicious growth. “I have a lot of cancer in my family,” she said on the phone, her voice sounding like it was no longer hers. My heart listened to her with tendrils curling around the phone. “I can’t stop crying. I’m looking at my little girl and I’m sick inside. Tama, what if I’m dying? I haven’t lived. I have more I want to do.” The words tumbled out. I didn’t interrupt. I hoped my listening would help her steady herself.
Now, I think it’s powerful to feel our pain. But that doesn’t mean I’m all about letting you become a freak show just because your mind is off to a self-scripted horror movie, buying Milk Duds and yanking your chain saw.
There are times in life when we must grieve. But we do not need to grieve optional, painfully indulgent, self-selected hallucinations. That’s just an unnecessary trip to the underworld without Advil, if you ask me. And I want you to use your brilliant mind for the powers of good—and comfort—instead.
“You do not know what anything means,” I said to Carol. It was the only absolute truth I knew. It’s the only perspective that’s always true. I don’t know what anything means. This is my go-to comfort thought, like mashed potatoes for the mind. It’s one of my favorite lines from A Course in Miracles. It’s a great big karate chop that silences fear. For me, it’s a kind of mini–Zen moment, an instant time-out at the beach, seagulls overhead, finding a gap between my racing thoughts.
Because this is what I’ve come to recognize about myself and everyone else, too: We do not fear uncertainty. We fear our certainty—as in we become “certain” about what things mean. When I’m in my fear loop, I’m certain that I will fail. I will not be loved. I will be stuck. Nothing will ever change. Okay, it will change—it will get worse. I am certain that everyone else is drinking champagne, celebrating their plucky, effortless lives, swinging from a Baccarat crystal chandelier—on a yacht. And no one else is going through the panic I’m going through.
I don’t know what anything means. I tell Carol, “This is your practice right now, sweetheart. Try not to start leaping to conclusions like ‘This lump is cancer, stage 4, requiring chemo, radiation, hacksaws, black magic, and nothing will ever work because I am a bad person and God hates me, and now I’ve wasted my life and these negative thoughts are probably like a grow light to the cancer cells and I’m still thinking them,’ or something along those lines. You don’t know what’s going on. Don’t scare yourself with stories. It’s just as possible that all is well or always well, in ways you don’t know yet. You don’t know anything. That’s the truth.”
When I spoke with Carol next, she was relatively calm. “So, dish, what happened?” I asked.
“I did the whole don’t-spin-out-of-control and, yo, just-live-in-the power-of-now thing,” she said, sounding like Eckhart Tolle meets the Dalai Lama meets Snoop Dogg.
She told me how she had to “get out of her head,” so she took her little girl to the downtown Boulder outdoor mall. “We stopped to watch Marvelous Dan, this superfun busker telling jokes and juggling sparkling colored balls. Then he called my daughter out from the huge crowd to do a trick with him. It was magic,” she says. “And Tama, I just slipped into the experience. I felt like it was set up for me. I was so grateful to not be thinking about cancer.” I smiled inside. I knew that in that moment she didn’t have cancer. She had fun.
I’m not talking about her cells. But in her experience of that moment, which is all our life really is, she was living her life, on a Wednesday with a brilliant blue autumn sky in the Rocky Mountains. She was eating raspberry frozen yogurt with her young blond-haired daughter, and they were giggling together as the juggler in the rainbow overalls threw too many balls in the air and strangers gathered together and clapped. This was what was real. There was no diagnosis in that moment. She was alive, seamless, and appreciating the time with sudden tenderness.
This is the way we handle uncertainty sometimes. We live. We dare to freaking live in the face of a thousand unknowns. In the face of possible damage.
We have the audacity to watch a movie or to brush our daughter’s hair and turn it into silk. Or paint the kitchen table blue or shoot hoops with the guys. We have the ability to thrive right now—even if our lives don’t have a guarantee. It’s possible to still crack jokes with your friends, even if you’re going bankrupt or getting a lumbar puncture in the morning. It’s possible to be afraid of what might happen in the future and to show up for love in your life right now. You have no idea what experience can open up for you—as you choose to use your mind in a way that strengthens y
ou.
It’s also possible to not allow an uncomfortable fact to become your identity and take over everything in your life. You are more than someone with cancer or someone who is single or unemployed. You can always choose another focus or filter.
Carol called when she got her tests back. She did not have cancer. But even if she had, she wouldn’t have missed that diamond of an afternoon of her life. She and her daughter shared a joy-filled memory together that could never be taken away. It was a better day than her usual healthy and unaware days. Carol’s experience taught me yet again how much unchecked worry ruins more of our lives than actual difficulties. A ninja chooses a more conscious focus.
“If you want an incredible life—which I know you do—you must choose how you experience your experience. Because your response to your life is your life.”
I’ve negotiated with worry my whole life. I’ve thought if I consciously prepared for or rehearsed the bad thing happening, like maybe a hundred times, it would feel less upsetting. But as I’ve launched into an off-the-beaten-path life, embracing the unknown, I’ve let my tireless rehearsals go. I couldn’t afford another moment in la-la land for the damned. I’ve never thought of myself as a daydreamer. But worrying is daydreaming. It’s just spinning scenarios that don’t use pastels.
Preparation is useful. Worry isn’t. I’ve driven on road trips by myself. It’s helpful to take a spare tire and your insurance information. It’s not helpful to imagine standing by the side of the road alone, as night falls, near a high-security prison where a serial killer who prefers brunettes has just broken free and happens to be carrying an ax to grind—an ax and, naturally, a plump, fresh tire. This is just not useful. Stress kills. And worry is unnecessary stress. But please don’t worry about that.
Thriving Through Uncertainty Page 4