It’s All Here if You Are: Discovering Everything We Want in Disorder and Change
by Jennifer Paros
“Isn’t it enough to have acted in harmony with your nature?”
Recently I took to playing a game with myself; I tried answering all of what seemed to be my unproductive thinking with, “You don’t have to worry about that.” The first time I thought it, I was surprised at how receptive I was to my own advice. And the more I employed the phrase, the more aware I became of what a high percentage of my thinking orbits around some form of fretting. I worry a lot, over the smallest of things – the minutiae of how to do, what to do, whether I should do, what I did. Tending the micromanagement of my fearful projections depresses my energy, so when I stopped, if only for a few minutes, I started feeling small surges of freed energy and my mood rose.
A couple days into my experiment, it was my turn to do our family’s weekly shopping. The grocery store where we shop is currently undergoing a complete redo. Almost everything is being moved: shelves dismantled; items relocated. The employees and patrons are often understandably fatigued and frustrated with the disorder. As I proceeded with my shopping, I quickly understood I could no longer rely upon my years-old mental map of the store to help me find what I was looking for.
When I first saw empty shelves, I had an alarmed, knee-jerk reaction, fearing I couldn’t get what I wanted. Though inclined to worry and complain, I began to wander, tentatively looking around. Once I believed everything was still there, I felt reassured. Soon I was having surprise rendezvous with various items on my list in their new or temporary homes and found myself taking delight in that. Then I started noticing how beautiful some of the new displays were.
I made my way through the store with eyes wide open, curious at every turn. I was charmed by the new signage and organizational feats; I was wowed by improvements in storage and display. I found the new places items were occupying fascinating. Entering an unusually active state of appreciation, I felt as though I was friends with everything. Gone was any remnant of griping. I wasn’t yearning for my usual rote run through the supermarket; I was happier in a state of discovery.
In fact, I felt so happy I found it a little odd. But there was something about the combination of not worrying and activated curiosity that had inspired this intense appreciation. And once the appreciation kicked in, it was hard to stop finding things to appreciate. In fact, when I left the grocery store, I even commented aloud on how wonderful it was to see the birds in the parking lot. I was on a grocery store high!
“Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.”
Once I stopped worrying and began believing that everything I wanted was there, I became more present and started discovering what I was looking for. And whatever I couldn’t get ceased to matter because I knew I’d just find it somewhere else some other time. The challenge of disorder and inconvenience shifted – the experience had become a game I couldn’t lose.
To be happy, I’d had to switch selves. I dropped the practiced self (she of the mental mapping, routine, and repetition) and switched to the natural self – the one eager to discover. We are born seeking discovery. Before we speak, before we walk, we are wired to reach for everything; as soon as we can move, we explore. We smell and taste and touch and listen to whatever we can. This is our natural self, and what is at the heart of fearlessness and innate stability. It is our internal ordering mechanism – a guiding principle as strong and valuable as the flower’s drive to reach for a source of light.
The practiced self is drawn to worry as a means of trying to pin life down and feel safer. The natural self is compelled by discovery to reveal life, allowing it to bloom through whatever we create in art or experience. Disorder and change make it hard to rely upon the practiced mind, but provide opportunity and impetus for us to allow our natural selves to lead. When we harmonize with thought inspired by our true nature, we are led to what we’re looking for just by being more of who we are. Everything we want is here because we are here.
Jennifer Paros is a writer, illustrator, and author of Violet Bing and the Grand House (Viking, 2007). She lives in Seattle. Please visit her website.