The moment before

I catch my myself wallowing in possibility.  I really get to know it.  There's the feeling of the impatient butterflies in my stomach. There's the nervousness that gets uncomfortable.  When I have my wits about me, I go for a run, work it out of my system, and return home more focused and clear.  Other times I throw my energy into something else, a tangential task that suddenly takes on more importance than it should.  Like reorganizing the kitchen yet again.  How can I expect to concentrate on this other thing without an organized kitchen? Or an empty dirty clothes hamper? Or with those books I have left to read sitting there, waiting to tell me something that might be important?

This place is the moment before execution, the moment before the critical step that once taken means I can no longer go back.  It's the step I take that crosses the line between thinking about a good idea and having a permanent record of actually trying to act on it.  It's pregnant with anticipation and possibility and visions of success and shaded by fear of failure.  It is as if prolonging this moment preserves a vision of the future that is sure to be sullied by the messiness of the real world.  I hold uncertainty at bay, allowing myself to ignore the unexpected that threatens to extinguish the dream completely.

This place is the shore around water that looks deceptively shallow.  I walk all around it, dip a toe in here or there, develop rationalizations for why the water is colder or deeper than I expected.  I could keep going in these circles forever, spiraling in as the water eventually dries up, leaving nothing but salt from a good idea that once had potential.

I'm reminded of how hard it was for me to learn to swim as a kid.  I was sure I had to fight the water in order to survive.  I worked so hard, flailed my limbs so desperately, panicking every time my head slipped even a little from its strained position over the water.  I couldn't swim very far at all before exhaustion set in.  I would be enrolled again, thinking I needed more practice.  I was the oldest kid in swimming lessons by that point and I felt like a miserable failure.  Eventually, many years later, I learned to swim thanks to a patient friend and a different approach.  Instead of focusing on all the different activities, I simply floated, adding movement here or there until it all came together.  I was amazed at how easy it really was, how very little energy was needed to tread water.  Even better, I actually enjoyed swimming.

It doesn't matter how much more prepared I think I need to be.  The more preparations I continue to make, the more I actually have to lose in terms of sunk time and energy.  Going through all these motions won't necessarily keep me from drowning.  I can't control all of the circumstances no more than I can control the weather.   There will be adjustments.  There will be changes.  What I have to do is frame my psyche to be comfortable with the little waves, to be confident in my ability to navigate the current, to swim out to meet the cresting waves rather than recoil from them.  Most of all, I have to remember how to float, how to slow down and see what is happening when I start to slip under.

The door of my refrigerator boasts a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt that I sometimes forget about, but when I rediscover it, I smile to myself, stand a little straighter, and remember where I put my courage.

"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face...Do the thing you think you cannot do."

-Andrea