IHOP for Horses
Sometimes I feel like I’m the boss of everything. Like my body is a meat robot and my head is the control panel, and everything in the world is part of a game where if I could just get every person and animal and thing and weather system to do exactly what I want, I could level up.
(Some feedback for weather systems: too much rain. A note to the baby geese crossing the street yesterday afternoon while I was driving a little too fast: you saved me, not the other way around.)
This appears to stem from the delusion that I know what’s best for myself and everyone around me and, why not, the entire world. The entire universe! Space/time! I read the first chapter of The Elegant Universe in 2001. (Having a little bit of knowledge about something is the most dangerous level of knowing because you don’t know how much you don’t know, but you think you know a lot, having picked up just enough vocabulary.)
Giving up that illusion of control is really hard. If I let go of the reins, I’m convinced the horse I’m on is just going to start galloping off towards the nearest ihop and demand hay. (“We don’t serve hay here, fella.”) In reality, the horse will probably just stop walking and wait, maybe sniff a flower or feel a passing breeze. The pace of life is a lot slower than I realize.
My friend Dyan said recently that “there’s nothing I can manage- just decisions and choices I can make.” NOTHING I CAN MANAGE???? Speak for yourself, Dyan…
This morning I got up at 5:30 and drank my coffee while writing a to-do list 20 items long. I feel comfortable in a consistent state of crisis. It allows me to stay in managerial mode. There would have to be 75 hours in a day for me to clear this list. Tonight, the unchecked items on the list will prove to me that I’ve failed, that I am a failure, confirming everything my inner mean girl has always known. Tomorrow’s list will be longer.
Dyan also said: There really is no crisis. If I don’t check off all those little boxes, the baby geese will still cross the road. It will still rain. In my brain, string theory will still look like one of those detective office bulletin boards where red twine is yoked around push pins connecting potential actors in a criminal organization.
Prayer for today:
I’m in a car and god is driving. (“God” is a linguistic shorthand for “everything I can’t control,” so basically everything.)
May I be a passenger who is cool with getting a ride, and not constantly correcting the driver.
May we all get love-bombed by baby animals waddling around like little drunks.
