On Navigating Uncertainty — My Father's List

I know some people are starting to get really scared now. As usual, over the past three years, my reaction has been paradoxical to this.

I’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching to uncover why this might be and I’ve come up with a few reasons. Decided I ought to post them here because they might help one or a few of you. (I’ve set them against my photos from my visit to the San Gabriel Mission in Los Angeles in October, part of my research to check off “teach a class about wine.” I haven’t shared these photos anywhere yet—but it was a very holy place.)

Disclaimer: I am no professional life coach or therapist or any of the sort. I’m just a woman on an adventure learning as she goes along, wanting to help.

For the past three years, I’ve lived my life like it’s a story being written, and the bad things that happen make it a better story.

When I was unexpectedly laid off from my job in Year Two and still had 40 items left to check off the list in only three years, at first I freaked out. Then my wise cousin in Florida said, “Plot twist!” I realized she was right. Nobody would be interested in the story of someone who kept her cushy life and career all the way through checking off this list. At some point I would have to rely on faith.

I relied on the severance I received and paltry freelance jobs for a year, just so I could get the writing done. The idea, after that, was to have my agent sell the writing as a book and I’d get a deal and would be back to my regular salary and even better. Nope, didn’t happen. Even after a year of writing.

What did happen: Lots of prayer and lots of new jobs coming in. Copy editor jobs. I wouldn’t have wanted this book deal to come so easily. I had to work hard and make the product exactly what it needed to be. I had to learn to be sure of myself. And I had to pay my own way, even if it was scary without my steady job anymore (and no plans to apply for a new one—I needed the extra time to write).

By the end of the year I’d had sometimes six gigs at once and made more money than I’d ever made. That too will be in my book.

I’ve become desensitized to financial changes of fate now. As long as I have enough to eat and pay rent, I’m OK. Everything else is extra.

The lesson: View your life like an interesting story and you’ll be less attached to the results.

Disappointments are inevitable—but humans are made to be adaptable. We have it in us to survive anything.

We wouldn’t have dominated as a species so far if this weren’t true. We have evolved to move beyond any hardship.

The power of prayer and positive thinking matters more than you think.

Try this for a second.

Visualize the day you get to be outside, living your normal life again. Feel the air on your face, hear the sounds of the birds in the trees, the warm sun beating against your closed eyes. Some music playing as a car rolls by. Children laughing, a man singing. You are drinking coffee in a cafe. You are walking to your office. You are painting on a hilltop. You are sitting in a stadium. You are enjoying dinner in your favorite restaurant with your favorite person.

It’s really really important right now that we can focus on images like this. KNOW that you will be there again. FEEL how it will feel when you get there. That way these things have already happened in your mind…it’s now just up to reality to catch up with them.

I’ve had to do this numerous times with the most impossible-seeming list items so I wouldn’t feel afraid or intimidated: talk with a president, speak to a national TV audience, skydive at least once. Hell, even “go to the Super Bowl” was a little scary. The one I’ve pictured the most is the moment I sell my book.

One day last summer I saw a green silk dress with an oriental floral pattern in a shop window and determined this would be the dress I would wear when I sold it. I waited all summer until the dress went down in price and then bought it. I’ve seen myself in that dress, selling the book, many times.

Now I just have to wait for reality to catch up.

Your loved ones need your creativity, calm and optimism right now.

I can’t recall one time in my life where my father encouraged me to worry about something. He was usually subtly teaching my brother and me ways to navigate through any crisis. How to tell time on a sun dial. What to do if a bear was chasing us. How to start a fire in the woods. He’d bring up these things apropos of nothing, just to test our knowledge all the time. But I think he was preparing us. He wanted us to feel we could stay calm and take care of ourselves in an emergency.

It’s why we were so good at supporting each other when he died.

Keep in mind, not everyone has had this training. If you have, it’s your job right now to keep them calm and tell them what we’re experiencing is an opportunity.

View every obstacle as a new adventure.

Any time something goes wrong with the list, I don’t just think, oh this will be an interesting chapter. I also think, hmm, what am I meant to learn from this? Usually my dad has a way of sending things my way that I needed more than I wanted. Or that I didn’t even know I wanted.

Our subconscious wants things without telling us. If we are living our lives openly, we can find fulfillment of them.

But this requires letting go of the need to control outcomes.

I have no idea how this will all turn out now, my project, given that I’m losing three months most likely—or more. The other day, I sat in front of my calendar and figured out which of the remaining 20 items could be done virtually. Somehow I feel a virtual visit to Vienna or drive in a Corvette will be less thrilling.

As will the table tennis tournament my husband and I will now engage in instead of the outdoor one we’d planned (to check off “beat a number one seed in tennis” and “have my own tennis court”).

What I do know, though, is that list items are always checked off exactly the way God and my dad intend them to be….I don’t get a choice in that matter. I’m merely along for the ride. I can do my best and contribute my part, my skills, planning, passions, openness, friendliness, perseverance, flexibility—but ultimately, it is out of my hands.

That’s what’s so awe-inspiring about being human, being a soul in a body. God is around us, pulling the strings, all the time.

He’s helping us especially right now. Just wait.

Keep your eyes on the prize.

When you’ve set a goal for yourself, particularly one with many moving parts—like training for a marathon, working on a large painting, setting up family game night—it’s easier to weather anxiety about the world around you.

You have no idea how many times people tried to talk me out of going on this mission. “It seems impossible,” they said. “Aren’t you worried you can’t do it? What happens then?" they said. “What’s the point of doing this if nobody changes the way they drive?”

When you believe in something and work hard to make it happen, you have to be able to drown out that noise. This is going to be more pertinent now than ever.

You know who you are and what you need to be happy, or at least you are willing to find out. You MUST go where your heart tells you, particularly right now. The usual distractions of life are now gone. You have no more excuses. Set up a new mission, a new project, one that requires an everyday routine.

I promise the fulfillment of it, increment by increment, even if it’s different from what you’d do in your regular life, will keep you happy and sane.

Understand that we are all connected and every person’s experience is different. Listen. Appreciate their unique take on things.

Most of what has gotten me through this project has been my willingness to revert to a child’s mentality. I have to approach people for lessons in list items all the time: tennis lessons, golf lessons, skydiving lessons, surfing lessons, guitar lessons, sailing lessons, gardening lessons, running lessons, writing lessons—and, most recently, learning how to record five songs and play piano again! Realizing you don’t know all the answers, but there are people out there who have your back and the knowledge and expertise to help you is how life is supposed to be.

We are not meant to hold all the answers to the universe within us. We all share these things. We are meant to reach out to one another and learn.

Blaming people for what’s happening or shaming them to do what’s right isn’t going to do anyone any good. Instead, let’s support and learn from each other.

That being said: Wish the best for President Trump and any of our other leaders. This is no time for schadenfreude.

Because we are all made up of the same spiritual material, whenever we wish harm on another or hope that the universe punishes them, what we are telling the universe is that we too would like to be punished for our sins.

Whenever we say, “it’s not fair that so-and-so has this much success, money or happiness or health or good fortune,” because we are made of the same divine material as so-and-so, the universe instead hears us say, “I don’t want success, money, happiness, health or good fortune—these are things I do not deserve.”

Do you see where I’m going here? If you don’t shine, I don’t shine. Let’s show a little compassion.

I know it’s gotten me through the past two years in particular…when I had to keep going when at times it seemed foolish or financially not feasible, and I watched my peers seemingly thrive while making less unconventional choices. Part of me envied their seeming security.

Instead, wish them well. They are part of you.

And that brings me to my final piece of insight (for now):

The mother vine—the oldest grapevine in America

We are living in a world of abundance, not scarcity.

I’m sure this is the hardest one for anyone to believe right now, but it’s true.

When my book didn’t sell on proposal alone (none of it had been written yet), I asked my dad in my head while praying one night, “Why do you want me to do this? It seems too hard! What is the lesson you hope for me to convey?”

And this was what I heard him say, “Abundance, not scarcity.”

I immediately pictured a big apple pie and how my mom would let my brother or me slice it and then the other one choose. (A great way to solve arguments.) We were so competitive, thinking one person would get more than the other. That we had to compete to get our share.

Unfortunately this is how a good portion of the world thinks, and it’s not going to work very well right now. We need to be giving, not taking, with the faith that we WILL be provided for.

One of the things I’ve come to discover in these three years of devoting much of my time and energy, of devoting myself to my dad’s excitement for life, giving my all to honoring someone, is that the more I give to this and to others (a natural byproduct), the more I am just fine. Better than fine. Happy.

I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my entire life.

God is an ever-giving presence. No matter what we do, he takes care of us. Because he made us. He loves us unconditionally. You do not have to do anything to earn God’s love.

Too often we live our lives by the notion that we must hold on to all the good fortune we have and only occasionally take a risk to reach out for more, hoping whatever we have so far doesn’t spill out.

I had an opportunity a few weeks ago to be interviewed by a major newspaper. They were insisting on scooping an even bigger newspaper that had already claimed first dibs on my story. I had to turn down the new paper that came calling, on principle. They wouldn’t work with me on extending their release. They insisted on exploiting me to get their story out there before the bigger one.

When someone said to me, “Ah, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” I just nodded and said “yeah.”

But that’s not at all what was happening there.

I wasn’t being conservative. I wasn’t holding onto what I had so I wouldn’t lose it by reaching for more. I was doing the opposite of that.

Every journalist knows, stories fall through all the time. I had no attachment to the idea that the first story in the big newspaper would definitely happen. It might not happen. What matters is that I believe that it will. I wasn’t forgoing something new so I could hold onto a sure thing. I was saying, I understand this thing I have is NOT a sure thing, and I will honor my agreement to them anyway.

This is what you need to be able to do in any given situation in life. We must be willing to let go of everything to find what it is that is truly meant for us.

We’re experiencing a great test of that right now, for everyone.

So hold on to each other. Be merciful. Wish the most for each other.

We will get through this.