Floating is Fine as a Strategy

Daily writing prompt

What’s a lesson you’ve learned recently that shifted your perspective?

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“You don’t have to decide everything right now.”

It was the funeral director who said this first but since that meeting a month ago, I’ve said it to myself a hundred times.

I don’t have to have a plan. I don’t have to weigh and re-weigh alternatives. I don’t have to think of the worst-case scenario (mostly because it’s already happened). And I don’t have to be in control. That last one is the revelation. I don’t have to be in control.

Last week, I stood in the kitchen with my older son, both of us shaking our heads at what brought us to this point with a little girl racing around my kitchen as if she owns the place (she does after just two months of living here).

I asked him how he’s doing. “Just goin’ with the flow,” he answered. “Yeah, me, too,” I said. “Me, too.” He seemed surprised, knowing me as someone who always has a plan. That I was winging it, just trying to keep my arms and legs from getting sliced up by branches while I float down what? this river of life seemed to surprise him.

Me, too. But it’s working. I don’t have to decide everything right now. That’s the lesson from these past two, very hard months. I can just float for a while, maybe a good while.

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Photo by Taylor R on Unsplash