458. Shockingly Simple

Staring off into space, she feels a hint of anxiety developing in her. An unspecific worry about the future, a feeling she is quite familiar with. Before it can take hold, she shakes her head and smiles. Everything is shockingly simple.

On one level, the thought amuses her, because her life isn’t simple at all. She has so many responsibilities and it’s a nightmare to fulfill all of her obligations. But on another level, she recognizes it also expresses a resounding truth. All of the complexities and complications that seem to matter so much actually do not matter. She does not have to allow herself to get caught up in it all.

Simplicity saves her. It’s as though she were leaning over the edge of a pit of debilitating feeling and just about to fall when this little thought grabs her and pulls her back to safety. She doesn’t have to worry. Not about this and not about anything. Of course, she can’t just wave a magic wand and make her worries disappear. She still has to live with them. But she refuses to allow herself to linger in them.

Reminding herself of this helps to keep her attention free. Then she can notice what she needs. Needs, too, are simpler than she thought. Not just her own needs but the needs of the people around her. The needs of real human beings. Everything is shockingly simple.

It’s strange how much power a thought can have. It loosens her focus almost immediately, even from the terrible feelings that once haunted her. Anxiety being the worst of them. Or maybe it was despair. The kind of despair where you can’t even move, where you begin to wish you could turn into a rock. She is free of it now, but she remembers.

Despair is not the kind of thing you forget. When she thinks of it now, it feels like a long lost friend who moved to the other side of the planet. She has a kind of deranged nostalgia for it, a wish to feel it again, if only for an instant. But it’s no longer part of her life, and it’s now that matters. Now she has much she needs to do and she will do it. Everything is shockingly simple.