Twenty six years ago when I was 26, my father died unexpectedly. It happened to coincide with a time in my life when I was already depressed, unhappy at work, and feeling anxious about my future. Sitting on the rose-patterned corduroy sofa inside my new therapist’s office, I confessed that I felt lost, stuck, uncertain about what was to come. I wanted to leave the job, but had only been there two years. I didn’t want to leave the boyfriend, but I wasn’t ready to settle down either. I missed my family, and wondered if I should live closer to them.
“Well,” said the therapist, “You could just upset the apple cart completely.”
As I recall I stared at her in disbelief. Did people really do that? Decide that so little in their life was working that the only recourse was to chuck it all and start over? It was the emotional equivalent of yanking the plug on some misbehaving, little-understood piece of technology and then plugging it back in with great expectations.
It was a terrible idea. But as a depressed, anxious, recently de-fathered 26 year-old, I couldn’t see this. At that time, I believed PhDs didn’t have terrible ideas, or if they did, they used them for making hideous sofa choices. And so, three months after my father’s death, I said goodbye to my boyfriend, my best friend, my job, and the horse farm I lived on and adored, and moved to what was then the middle of nowhere.
Do I have to tell you the plan stunk? That I missed the boyfriend, the best friend, my coworkers, and the horses intensely? That what I had done, far from hitting the reset button on my life, was to heap sorrow, loneliness, and unemployment on top of grief, anxiety and confusion? I have to wonder: what did the therapist think might come of this apple-cart overthrow? Had she thought it through at all? If so, what did she think was possible?
Which brings me to one of my all-time favorite questions to ask or be asked: What’s possible? It’s a great question to ask yourself (or someone else) in times of stuckness or uncertainty. I often wonder what would have come of my young self and my supposedly dispensable “apples” had the therapist taken the time to ask me, What’s possible if you upset the apple cart? What’s possible if you don’t? She could have even followed it with the deliciously abstract, often maddening, but almost always revealing, What else? I might have still tossed the apples, but maybe I’d have at least salvaged the cart.
It’s amazing, isn’t it, how much power we can hand over to other people, especially those with credentials? I loved this and your blog.
It IS amazing! Thanks Carol.
I love the questions, what’s possible and what else. Well, at least I like the idea of them. I probably don’t like them if I need to answer them. But, for sure, I love the blog!
What’s possible if you answer them? What’s possible if you don’t?
A well meaning guidance counselor called it to my attention I would probably “never” make it as a writer andeven if I did, I would never make a substantial amount of money as one. No thought was given at the time to the fact I was already a sports reporter for a small hometown newspaper who had offered to nominante me for a college scholarship. My, my, wonder what that counselor is doing now and what passion he gave up on the way.
Unfortunately like you I listened to the voice and did not ask the questions.
That’s amazing, Michael. Eventually we find our way (some of us) but at what cost and with how much time lost?
So the advice that set in motion the chain of events that led to having us in your life was the worst? A hard verdict for those of us who love you even so.