Three Terrifying Things Required for a Good Life
I remember my first panic attack. Fourth grade, Mrs. Myers’s classroom, religion class at Notre Dame Elementary School.
“When we die,” Mrs. Myers said, “if we’ve lived a good life, we go to heaven where we live forever and ever happily with God and his angels.”
And thus on this day, Caity discovered—not at this exact moment, mind you, but in therapy years later—that she indeed was (and is) an anxious person, because my mind reeled.
Forever? What if I hate it? Happily? Are we forced to be happy with no free choice in the matter? Who will be there? Will I even like anyone?
While friends and classmates around me seemed undisturbed by this revelation—bored, even—my heart was racing, and I was in such a state of panic my vision started to white out, a symptom that happens right before you faint. (Thankfully, I did not faint.)
Instead, I had encountered a bout of something that would frame my adolescent and adult existence: anxiety.
This tendency to overthink has followed me doggedly into adulthood. It has been both a boon and a burden as I’ve attempted to navigate the more immediate—and, in many ways, more terrifying—elements of being alive.
Let’s deal with one existential crisis at a time and put the afterlife on the back burner until I’m around 80. God willing.
For now, I’m concerned with this life.
And although very little of it is entirely within our control, I’ve come to believe that certain truths must be accepted if we want to live it well. They are brutal and kind. They lead to our greatest joys and our deepest pain. They are also unavoidable if we intend to build lives that are true to our values, desires, and ambitions.
The first is the beauty and brutality of change.
Can I get real for a moment? Come closer and don’t judge me, please.
It’s going to sound silly and vain and absolutely mad, but I want you to clearly understand how fruitless it is to fight change, and what better way than to lay myself bare with a real-life example?
Stretch marks.
For me, some of that resistance has been admittedly shallow: the gray hairs, the wrinkles, the two or three new stretch marks.
Apparently, my body will not remain a consistent vessel of “perfection.” Spoiler: it never was perfect, because that isn’t possible, as none of us are perfect nor ever will be, thank God.
Devastating.
But aging isn’t the enemy, and neither is caring about how we look. The danger is allowing our fear of time to become a war against our own lives—as though we can perfect, purchase, or discipline ourselves into never changing.
We can’t.
Change, in collaboration with its best friend time, will keep arriving.
But what a gift it is to age into new chapters—to meet new versions of ourselves in every season. The work is to remain present and purposeful: to know another season is coming without treating the one we’re living now as merely something to survive.
The true power of change is harnessing its possibilities to improve our lives and our chances of happiness.
It isn’t to control change—a losing battle, no matter what new hot procedure is on the market or how many more promotions we strive for to hit that ideal salary—it’s to use the momentum of positive habits to influence the best possible change that can happen in our lives.
You can start writing the book, begin the workout, and commit to the healthy food options. You can decide to spend more time with family, read more books, stop spending money on frivolous items. You can take that night class to level up your skills.
You can place yourself in the best possible position to achieve your goals with the power of action—to increase the momentum and percentage of positive change.
So, make change your friend and realize what you can control: your daily actions in this moment. Not two days from now or two years from now. Today.
And let the stretch marks be. Trust me.
Focus your attention elsewhere, like on that new hobby, and be at peace.
Listen to me and listen to me well: be okay with the uncertainty.
In fact, learn to thrive in it.
Revel in it.
Learn to hold hope close while being prepared for no guarantees.
Oh yes, yes, I still struggle deeply with this.
We humans love guarantees.
Guarantees are in our marketing, our terms and conditions, our religions (as long as you follow X and X and X rule), our laws (see note after religions).
We are obsessed with certainty.
And for good reason—we want to know we’ll be okay. We want to know our families will be okay. We want to know that our efforts won’t be in vain.
And while I’m still a student of life on this journey of accepting uncertainty—maybe one day even being fully okay with it—I am certain without a doubt that uncertainty is the only thing to depend on.
That doesn’t mean abandoning all hopes and dreams.
In fact, viewed in a different light, it’s so freeing.
We can’t predict that if we do exactly something—or exactly not something—the end result will be what we think.
In many ways, that’s beautiful.
You start writing. You hope it goes somewhere. Your imposter syndrome says it probably won’t. But you keep at it and it does.
You were originally certain you wouldn’t be any good—but you kept going and it paid off.
Literally.
Look at you.
Now, that doesn’t mean each book will be a bestseller, but betting on yourself and keeping yourself open to possibilities and showing up regardless of the “predictions” disguised as “certainties” saying you aren’t good enough will change your journey for the better.
While nothing is certain, when I show up and I do the things I said I would and put myself out there, I vastly change the direction of probably not going to happen to maybe it will.
And that’s the bet I’m taking instead of certainty.
And where I end up is probably not what I had clearly envisioned.
But we’re pretty bad as humans at knowing what we think we want.
So it will probably be exactly what I need.
And then there’s the big daddy of them all: vulnerability.
Oops. I said it.
(Can we get Brené Brown on the mic for this one?)
Honestly, out of the three, this is the one I have the most beef with.
This is the hardest to do in my personal, professional, and daily life.
Some people are so good at it, and I am currently serving my time in Vulnerability Middle School because I’ve skipped classes so many times in life to avoid the lessons this one has to teach.
So vulnerability, I’d like to get this one out of the way before we begin:
Fuck you.
There. I’ve said it.
Now, if you’re like me, then you get it.
You get why it’s hard to do.
But if you’re also like me—and 100% of the other people on the planet who have leaned into being vulnerable—you know that when you’ve done it with the right people (and even the wrong people), you’ve come out the other side so much stronger, wiser, more loved by yourself or by the people who have seen you and accepted you for who you are.
There’s no other way to true closeness than to be vulnerable with those you love in your life.
Or with yourself.
True self-love is allowing yourself to be vulnerable and holding yourself close when things don’t work out the way you wanted them to, when you’ve put yourself on the line and things didn’t go as planned.
Vulnerability isn’t just opening your heart.
It’s asking for a promotion.
It’s starting the blog, the business, changing careers.
It’s saying I love you first.
It’s admitting I don’t know.
It’s walking into a room where you don’t know anyone.
It’s trying something you might absolutely suck at.
It’s the basis—literally ground zero—of what makes life worth living.
And some people never leave their comfort zones long enough to flourish.
If you can fully embrace this mighty trifecta—or at least accept and practice getting comfortable being uncomfortable—you will most certainly have a good life.
Maybe not the version you thought it was going to be, but these seeds grow when planted and watered consistently.
Maybe they’re not the quickest.
Maybe they’re more pine tree than sunflower.
But they will thrive if you challenge yourself to be brave, to follow your goals and dreams, and to hold to faith and flexibility.
Let yourself change.
Let yourself not know.
And, terrifyingly, let yourself be seen.
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