No Right Answers

One of the most painful and corrosive habits I’ve hadHas been trying to do the right thingSounds crazy, right?Isn’t that what we’re always doingUsing our intelligence and experienceTo move towards pleasure and away from painTo get the right answerAnd avoid the wrong one?I’ve come to realizeIt’s an enormous distraction for meIt sets the world as a puzzle I’m trying to solveInstead of a wonder I’m a part ofStriving to figure out the right answerKeeps life treacherousA rocky cliffWhere missteps can cost everythingAnd some magic formula shoots you right to the topNever, literally, in my experienceHave those stakes been trueI’ve thought them to be true a hundred timesBut the truly dangerous stuff, I’ve had little control overAnd luck and timing have helped me far more than perfect planningSo maybe there’s no right answerThere’s just what’s here, and my choices in meeting itHow close I’m willing to getHow I let it inform my next choiceLife gets - well, easier isn’t the right wordBut less perilous, for sureIn part because my trust in my own capacity growsAnd my fear of doing it wrong diminishesOur educational system creates unnatural structuresWhere life is linearAnd while some answers are clearly right and others clearly wrongTruth be told, often things aren’t that distinctI remember volunteering in my daughter’s 4th grade classMore than once - maybe four or five times in the one semester she attended-I would be grading testsAnd notice multiple answers were technically correctThe first time, I asked to see the chapter reading so I could assess which the test was truly asking forAnd the teacher declined: ‘you don’t need to read it, just do what the key says’It was so frustrating, and so falseIllusions of straightforwardnessMay have made sense to produce an industrial workforceBut that’s not quite what we need anymoreAnd, institutionally, we’re slow to recognizeThat just because something worked beforeDoesn’t mean it’s what this moment calls forI bring all of this upBecause I’m staring down my futureAnd I keep hearing adviceEither encouraging me to ‘manifest’Or be careful not to misstepAnd both schools of thought come from loving placesBut I need to remind myselfAgain and againThat attuning to the emergent futureIs where I want my energy focusedNot creating what I wantOr avoiding what I don’t wantI have life requirements I need to tend toAnd the mix of fear and longing I’ve approached it with in the pastJust muddied the watersI want to align to the flow of the watersWith trust in both the process of lifeAnd my own capacity to meet itRight thingWrong thingLeft footRight footAll of it moves us forwardAll of it knows our name This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fallingtenderly.substack.com