“There's nothing to worry about
until there's something to worry about.”
This is a lesson from a lived experience, not a universal prescription.
When the script took over.
As soon as the number appeared on the screen, dread started to take hold.
A suffocating heaviness in my chest.
A rapid anxiousness in my breath.
What did she want?
What have I not done this time?
Does she know that I know that she knows?
And so I reached for the mental script that took years in the making. A script cast with just us two.
I was ready for all the possibilities:
How I would respond if my life plans became a conversation for debate.
The composure I would carry if my emotional buttons were pushed.
The carefully crafted words I would use if I were met with unasked-for counsel.
I breathed and let the final ring pass before I picked up.
My “hello” travelled less like a greeting and more like a question mark.
And as she responded with warmth, I immediately felt regret.
She asked how I was doing, and I responded.
All part of the script.
I braced for the impact of what would come next.
But what followed rendered everything I had saved to memory useless.
She needed a favor and was hoping I could help.
At that moment, my body dropped its guard and softened.
Suffocation eased back into breath, and anxiousness retreated, leaving me with relief.
I found myself tucking the script back in the drawer and allowing my presence to return.
And for the next fifteen minutes, my sister and I brainstormed a world and laughed at the audacity of the magic we would create together.
Our minds both present, in forward momentum, untouched by the past.
The mind behind the moment.
Nothing is quite as powerful,
quite as complex,
quite as vulnerable,
as the mind.
It is the source from which decisions are made, emotions are filtered, and the ordinary and extraordinary take shape.
It absorbs both truth and fallacy.
As much as it can elevate, it can also devastate.
It offers protection that can’t always be fully trusted.
Whatever it feeds on, it amplifies.
On the surface, it is both sage and magician, but underneath, it is merely an echo. For better or worse.
Our minds can be practical when the ground is most steady.
We know to reach for the sweater when the temperature starts to drop.
We know to stay alert before making our way across a busy street.
We even know to rest when the exhaustion from our day starts to speak.
Then there is a part of our minds where clarity rarely trespasses. A place where clear thinking gives way to reinterpretation, repetition, and overanalysis.
Where stressful moments are magnified into every worst-case scenario.
We begin to imagine futures that have not happened yet, and we live them in our bodies as if they already have.
We start to accept our version of the truth before a verdict has been reached.
This does not mean we should turn a blind eye to all worst-case scenarios.
It just means that they may need a reframe, allowing us to see them as possibilities rather than absolutes, and in turn ask ourselves:
What is within my control?
What can I do to help minimize these possible outcomes?
This can carry us into forward momentum without holding on to the defeatist narrative.
We can prepare what’s within our control. And once we reach the point where there is nothing more we can do, then there is nothing more we can do.
That is when we must be willing to let go.
To allow ourselves to lift the weight from our chest, knowing that we have done the best we can.
To recognize that what comes next may be outside of our control, beyond what we can see, possibly in someone else’s hands.
The path forward only becomes clear when we can finally meet the moment that reveals it.
Until that moment arrives, we may not be privy to the full picture, and what we are left with is the wait.
And waiting is often the hardest part.
Being comfortable with uncertainty is often where the real test begins.
It is what prevents worry from growing into something it may never need to become.
So why worry about something that has yet to arrive?
Why respond to imagination when we can respond to reality?
We can prepare for all the different possibilities, but only to a point.
Beyond that, we are dealing with unknowns that we can’t fully anticipate, where some things might unfold in ways we could have never predicted.
For when the time comes, if it comes, it will arrive with greater clarity.
We will know how to feel, how to respond, and what is real.
Until then, we wait.
