Anything Can Happen

"If the only thing stopping you is that you're scared it'll be too hard or scared you'll lose, I'd rather not know you." - Mrs. Landingham on The West Wing

Expanding on what I mentioned when last we met, fear of failure and the comfort of contentedness kept me from doing a lot of things for a lot of years.

I suppose it's that way for many, but for me, it became pretty extreme over the course of nearly a decade.

I thought sticking with the adult work would always bring in the money. I thought falling in love with your best friend was pretty fail safe too. I thought expecting the worst means you can't be disappointed. I was not living the dream, but I was content. I was comfortable. I constantly asked myself in fear, "What if this is as good as it gets?"

I played it safe for so long in so many different avenues, but once I discovered that even playing it safe doesn't prevent every fall, it was the single most liberating thing that ever happened to me. Suddenly, I could stop trying so hard. I could finally be myself. And somewhere in all that, I found that I was naturally the person I'd been trying to convince people I was all along when I just stopped trying so hard to be.

So it's not that I had a change of perspective and it's not that my faith became greater than my fear or anything quite as "self help" or Qabalistic as I always expected it to be.

It's just that I found the fear to be really pointless. Playing it safe wasn't as safe as I thought it to be.

It's only a year later, looking back, that I'm able to put some of the pieces together and figure out why everything happened the way it did. I looked back on those old "Diary" entries this week and laughed at how only days after any given disaster struck, I was hectically trying to learn the lessons and find the reasons why. I was right a lot of the time too actually, but it's just funny how mere hours had passed and I was desperate to wrap everything up with a neat little bow.

I'm not so quick to find all the solutions these days. You're less interested in knowing the answers in advance when you're not trying so hard not to get hurt.

I was hurt. I will be hurt again. I grew leaps and bounds from it. I have more growing to do.

But those answers come to you when they're ready. Even if you have the right answer in your head, feeling it in your heart is a whole different ballgame. We can't force our feelings or our life lessons. We can only be open to life's infinite possibilities.

I tell you, anything can happen if you let it. I've been paid to do stand-up, star as the lead in a musical and sing sets at night clubs in the last three months alone. I'm not even going to lie and say I've been trying all that hard to make it happen. Most of the time it was them that approached me. I've also met some truly amazing new people that I am grateful to have in my life, romantic and platonic.

But it's all because a year ago around this time I started thinking maybe there were better things out there, maybe I was worth more, maybe I had more to offer, maybe I was settling at the ripe old age of 26. When I opened myself to the possibilities by sacrificing my fear and comfort zones, those infinite possibilities found and still are finding their way to me.

It's really a beautiful time for me, discovering that the only thing I ever needed to do to be the person I always wanted to be was stop trying so damned hard to be it.

Song of the Week: "Anything Can Happen If You Let It" - Original London Broadway Cast, Mary Poppins

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"You can choose the super or the superficial."