Embrace the Present, Embrace Possibility
by Sheryl Karas M.A.
Worrying about the future is something I am way too much of an expert at. Aren't we all these days? Life has been so full of turmoil with terrible news about war and terrorism and children being kidnapped and other horror stories on the nightly news, not to mention worries about budget cuts and the normal personal dramas and transitions of everyday life.
I got some advice on this the other day: Embrace uncertainty. (Personally, this advice sounds impossible to me but there's a logic in it with exploring.) Everything in life is uncertain. Security, as Helen Keller liked to say, is an illusion. We could be hit by a bus in freak accident tomorrow. We can plan our lives down to the nth degree and lose it all in an earthquake. We just don't have that much control! And yet so many of us, myself included, spend hours every day trying to plan and control what happens next.
There's a flower called the Mimulus that likes to live in precarious places overhanging running water. Other flowers choose protected areas surrounded by grass and trees or prefer to be in wide open grassy fields but not Mimulus. It lives life on the edge and when it's time to reproduce it just casts its seed into the water below where it is carried down the stream and planted wherever it ends up. Can you imagine what it would be like to trust life so much? To just let go and believe you'll wind up where you need to be?
Anxiety comes from fear about the future. We want the future to be a certain way and we get afraid that it won't be. We try to convince ourselves that we can make things work out the way we intend and spend hours trying to imagine and prepare for any possibility that would interfere with our idea of how things "have" to go. And yet underneath we KNOW we can't control every variable so, because we get so invested in how we want things to be, we get anxious and afraid.
I think the best way to be prepared for the future is to understand that even the worst case scenario can open doors for the best. We have to embrace everything that happens in the present as an opportunity.
Sometimes my clients believe the "worst case" is if their patient were to wind up in a nursing home or assisted living facility. My friend "Jay" is such a caregiver. He's taking care of his mom and travels from Santa Cruz to San Francisco every weekend to take care of her. He recently related an interaction he had with his therapist when he was in a particularly frustrated state of mind:
Therapist: It sounds like you've lost you "G r".
Jay: My "G r"?
Therapist: Yeah, you used to have Gratitude and now you've just got attitude!
Jay: What have I got to be grateful about? My mom is worse and we might even have to find her an assisted living facility.
Therapist: Tell me what's great about moving her to assisted living. I know, I know you don't think it's great, but humor me. Think of something great about it.
Jay: Well, if we found one in Santa Cruz I wouldn't have to travel to the city every week.
Therapist: Great! Tell me another one!
Jay: Well, I wouldn't have to worry about her so much because I would know other people would be looking in after her everyday.
Therapist: Great! Tell me another one!
Jay: Well, if they have lots of activities my mom might be happier and have more fun. She might even make some new friends!
Therapist: Anything else?
Jay: If I'm not spending so much time away I might have time for a girlfriend and get that part of my life back in order and I would be a much happier person! This actually could be the best thing...except I'm afraid my mom will feel really bad about leaving her home.
Therapist: At first. And you might have feelings about that, too. That's part of embracing the present. We try to control the future to prevent feeling our feelings. But every change, even positive ones, entails a loss! When we get married we give up the freedoms of being single. When we have a baby we give up even more. But if we believe we'll gain more than we leave behind we go forward anyway. That's what you have to help your mom do -- look forward to the possibilities such a move would create. Less worry! Less work! More joy! More comfort! More pleasure! Help her embrace possibility. We always have to grieve the lives we leave behind to embrace a new tomorrow so help her do it. Acknowledge her grief and loss, let her cry, let her grieve but keep reminding her of the pleasures to come. Maybe she'll find a new partner, too!
Jay: ! ! !
Caregiving Articles
© Copyright 2007 Sheryl Karas & Paul Hood
A new version of this article can be found in Sheryl’s latest book The Spiritual Journey of Family Caregiving.
Caregiving Articles