“Worrying is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do but doesn’t get you anywhere.” Author Unknown

My daughter, Sally, has always been the kind of kid who needs to know what lies ahead. “Tell me about today, Mommy,” she would ask as I lifted her out of her crib to change her diaper in the morning. She didn’t want to hear about the weather. She wanted a blow-by-blow of everything she was going to do and everywhere she was going to go that day – in order.

She is famous for asking, as I clear away the dinner dishes, what we are having for dinner tomorrow. She started asking who we were trick-or-treating with sometime in June. She’s only in fourth grade, but has already started worrying about what teachers she is going to have when she gets to middle school.

All of her worrying and wondering weighs heavily on my heart. First, her questions, plans and concerns about what’s next run counter to the way I’ve chosen to live. Staying in the moment is at the very heart of my yoga practice, after all. I’ve learned on my mat that re-playing the past and imagining the future are just busy-work for the mind. Neither is a productive use of my energy. Like rocking in a rocking chair, they give my mind something to do, but they don’t get me anywhere. Because I spend a great deal of energy trying to live out the lessons I learn on my mat, sometimes her questions about “what’s next” can feel like stumbling blocks to the centered state of mind I’m working hard to cultivate. Sometimes I’m so engrossed in what we’re doing now, that they just seem outlandish. I mean, really!  Does anyone know (or care) who they’re trick-or-treating with in June?!

But I think the real reason it concerns me that my daughter shoots off into the future again and again is that I’ve lived like that. I’ve experienced her desperate need to know what’s next. I can understand how knowing what she’s having for dinner tomorrow night might help balance out the uncertainty that she feels about what tomorrow will bring. I can appreciate her attempts at grappling for control over her future. Because that’s really what this is all about. She, like me (and maybe like all of us?), prefers to be in control.  But, unlike me, she hasn’t lived enough to understand that the control she craves is an illusion.

Our control is limited to our choices and our actions — the things we do and do not do, the words we say and do not say. Each of these choices and actions is a step along our path. And each helps determine the course our path takes. For instance, your family doctor didn’t simply wake up one morning and decide to start seeing patients. She worked hard in school to get good grades in order to get into a good college and, then, into a medical school. She spent countless hours interning at hospitals. She took tests to receive her credentials. She interviewed for jobs. There were many steps along her way to becoming your trusted physician.

While many of the steps we take along our paths are deliberate, the course of our lives remains open to serendipity. It is possible that your doctor was required to take an entry level science class in college. It is possible that the charisma and passion of the professor of that class forever altered the course of her life by inspiring her to a career in medicine. Absolutely, all the work she did to get into that college made it possible for her to meet her life-changing teacher. But it is just as conceivable that she could have chosen a different science class with a different, less inspiring teacher to fulfill her requirement. Had that happened, she might be now be your banker or baker or landscape designer rather than your doctor. 

The real work for us is in remaining curious about where our paths will take us. It is shockingly easy for this sense of curiosity to be overwhelmed by our worries and plans. We can get so focused on our planned-for future that we miss potential detours or alternate paths. I, for one, am very glad that the author of The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini, allowed himself the distraction from his career as a doctor to write down the story in his heart. And, I think my family would agree that our dining room table is a better place because Ina Garten (of Barefoot Contessa fame) decided to follow her heart away from her career as a White House nuclear policy analyst to pursue her love of entertaining and cooking. I don’t think either would have believed where they were headed had they had a crystal ball. In fact, it was probably easier for both to take that initial step in their new direction without knowing its magnitude.

In my humble opinion, the secret to staying open and curious to our unknowable paths seems to lie in pouring ourselves into each step along our way. This is a bit of a dichotomy, isn’t it? How can we give something our all when that something may not be “it” for us? It’s our commitment and our dedication to whatever we’re doing that keep us in action. Pouring our effort into our work keeps us growing and changing. It keeps us from that still, stuck place of worrying and wondering about what our future holds. Our actions become part of who we are – and who we are becoming. Our choices, in other words, become part of our history. Our history, as a matter of course, leads us to our future. One step at a time.

It was tough for me, as a long-time worrier, to heave myself out of the rocking chair I had been worrying in for so long. Luckily, my little girl is younger and spryer than I. While she may periodically sit for a spell in her own rocking chair, I don’t think she’ll get stuck. With gentle reminders to stay with me in today rather than shooting off into tomorrow, or next week, or (heaven help us!) next year, I bet she’ll spring up and into action easily and gracefully. I, for one, am very curious to see where her path leads her. 

Namaste,
Amy
www.yogawithspirit.com
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