The Next Right Thing

When I was much younger, I used to think I was low-maintenance. Easy-going.  Even-keel. Unflappable and solid.

Ha. Hahahahaha.

I have realized over the years that I'm a neurotic, high-strung mess. I worry over moving, not moving, future moves and where we'll wind up after we're done moving. I agonize over politics because clearly we're on the edge of either a Mad-Max racist dystopia or a communist hell-hole where the thought police are always on the hunt.  Every pregnancy has been eight months of dreading the pain of delivery, every freshly-remembered mole is cancer. I worry about my kids being well adjusted, dating, driving, and living on my couch until I die and it becomes their couch. I have nixed entire regions to live in because they are prone to tornados, have a risk of tsunamis, or have a super-volcano lurking underneath. I don't swim in deep water because there are clearly monsters waiting to eat me and I can't convince my brain otherwise. I've been anxious about leaving Alaska for the last two years because I'm scared I might never make it back.  I don't like flying with only part of my family because I'm worried about orphaning the other half. I constantly eyeball the doors at church and movie theaters. Climate change? Ask my husband about my obsessive monitoring of the weather. Wars and deployments? Don't get me started, but you know I've thought my way through being forced to wear a burqa. Even an escape room has sent me into pitchy fits of nerves because some small part of me is scared that it's a front for an organ harvesting ring.

So, yeah--I obviously have more than a passing acquaintance with anxiety. With that context, it's kind of surreal how chill and capable I become when the crap actually hits the fan.  When the car breaks down in the middle of nowhere on a lonely trucker road, I should be hyperventilating, and yet I'm zen as hell. A kid bumps her head and sprouts a purple lump the size of a grapefruit, and I calmly measure out Tylenol and keep her up the next few hours.  A strange man tries to push his way through my front door after his girlfriend, and my heart rate doesn't even speed up. U.S. military bases where friends and loved ones are stationed were just bombed by a foreign power, and I can discuss it coolly and rationally.

Why am I this way?  No idea. Maybe God looked at my twitchy little self and took pity on those around me.  Maybe the brain that originally helped me avoid getting eaten by tigers doesn't know how to gauge danger in a world that is statistically safer than ever before. I do know that I'm not alone with my fears.  So many of us are scared of so many things.  I think, though, that while there are some very tangible fears and threats, most of us are simply scared of things we don't know and can't control. Darkness is frightening, not because it's more dangerous or has more monsters, but because we can't see.  We jump at shadows and "what if" our way through hypochondriacal rabbit holes and conjure hysterical predictions about the future, and yet, when we are finally in the moment with a tangible problem, we often find out our imaginations have far outstripped reality and that we are stronger than we hoped.

Tonight I know a lot of people are scared. I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a dull knot of worry twisting in my gut as we wait to find out exactly how things shake out in Iraq. How do we get through this?  As a child, I thought adults had things figured out, that so many things would be simpler and clearer.  I'm sure you can imagine my disappointment when I found out that everyone was just making it up as they went along and hoping no one peeked behind the curtain. So if no one knows how the heck to drive the train, then what do we do?

It's a little cheesy, but I've had a Disney song on loop in my head the last few days.

Just do the next right thing
Take a step, step again
It is all that I can to do
The next right thing

I won't look too far ahead
It's too much for me to take
But break it down to this next breath, this next step
This next choice is one that I can make.

I can do that.  I don't need to stress about what comes next month, or next year or next century. As multiple people have told me recently, there's nothing I can do about it so there's no point in worrying about it. (Ha.  Challenge accepted.)  Whether I want to admit it or not, they're right.  All I can do is take one step at a time and try to do the next right thing within my circle of influence. Of course, I can't always sell that to my panicky little rodent brain.  I can keep trying though, and maybe we can help each other along--one step, one choice, one breath at a time, we can help each other do the next right thing. We will be okay together.

As long as we avoid escape rooms and that super-volcano under Wyoming, anyway.  Seriously.