Yeah, But…*

Here’s something nobody knows about me: When I access something very truth-y in my morning journaling, my handwriting becomes miniscule.

Written like those boardwalk booths that used to write your name on a grain of rice, I find myself getting really tiny with my words – and that’s when I know I’ve struck something important. Shh, don't say it too loud or it might whisk off the page.

Let’s back up a little though.

Yesterday, I got to see my therapist (the Rosen Method therapist I’m still seeing. Despite my doubts before every time I go, I always leave laughing that I doubted). We hadn’t seen one another for about a month due to schedules, so I had a lot to catch her up on.

Last time we spoke, I told her I felt like I didn’t have any options available to me in dating land. Like Goldilocks, I’d experienced the too hot, the too cold, but have yet to find the “just right.” I mentioned this yesterday because I was talking about my job search. I told her that as I was driving over last night, I realized that it’s not that I don’t have any options available to me in job land – it’s that I refuse to commit to one path.

She challenged me on this a little, and asked if it was “refused” or something else. And, surely, it is fear and paralyzation.

Because here is the secret, sacred truth: I do know what I want to do.

I told her that I see my job options like a scene from Sliding Doors. If you haven’t seen the movie, the premise is based on Gwenyth Paltrow in one version of her life catching a subway train before the doors shut; in another version, she misses that train. At that point in the movie, we follow both these lives and their divergent challenges and successes (and haircuts). 

I told her I see three options of my job life for myself:

One: Be a Jewish professional, or a community professional, a leader, an organizer, a bringer-together-er.

Two: Do something counsel-y and social work-y, working directly one-on-one with the populations I want to serve, particularly youth.

And three.

And this is where I began to cry.

Be an artist.

I laughed through the tears, and said, “Well if tears are any indication of truth, then the third one’s the charm.”

The third one is also the hardest. Requires the most work, the most vulnerability, the most action, the most fortitude, and… the most uncertainty.

I told her I’m not willing to be a starving artist. But perhaps there’s another way.

As a note, by “artist,” I mean in all disciplines, starting with performance, starting with that Yoshi’s singer I mentioned yesterday. Starting with that dream.

I think I’ve mentioned here before that I’ve been told I don’t let myself dream. It came up a few times yesterday when I had to correct my “Yeah, But”s to “Yes, AND”s.

Every time I even begin to think about following this path, I get buried under a mountain of “Yeah, But”s. I don’t think I need to list them for you, since I’m sure you have your own bevy that attack your own dreams.

So, we/I were careful to reframe them. I told her at the end of the session that I feel like my whole life has been an exercise in “Yeah, But.” And she told me that that is changing; that I am changing it.

And it was in my morning pages today that I recorded something I thought of after I came home yesterday that actually knocked the wind out of me. What I wrote in the miniscule, micro-truth script:

When we are in alignment with our highest good, the Universe will rearrange itself to help us.

I don’t have to know how to do this. Because I don’t. What struck me so suddenly and viscerally were the words I’ve heard repeated for years: When we take one step toward (G-d / Fate / the Universe / our Highest Good), it takes a thousand toward us.

I will be carried. I will be helped. I won’t have to do this alone, because, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”

I was floored by this revelation. I was floored that I actually heard and felt and believed it. It was a moment of belief.

I take care of the What and G-d takes care of the How. I’ve heard this for years.

What I have needed to do is admit and commit to the What.

I have “Yeah, But”s coming up as I write this. About money, and too late, and this is for other people and other lives, and what are you thinking of me right now as you read this and are you doubting me and rolling your eyes, and how, and how and how.

Yes, I have doubts and fears. AND. I only have to hold onto the “What.” I only have to hold on to my dream. That’s my only job right now – to not go back to sleep, to not abandon my dream, again. To not continue to break promises to myself. To not drown myself in those fears and doubts. Because I am trying to live my truth. And all this wisdom says that’s all I need to do.

(You know, along with reaching out, asking for help, seeking people in these professions, gathering intel, honing my vision, practicing and learning the fuck out of it AND remembering that the pain of avoiding all this is SO MUCH GREATER than the pain of trying to do it.)

Molly, you want to be a singer in a band? You want to perform onstage in dive bars? And at Yoshi’s? And be a lounge singer? You want to feel proud and full and felt and heard?

All you have to do is say, “Yes.”

*(Thanks, Joel Landmine, for the title grab. See: Yeah, Well...)