Understanding
I cannot tell you how many blogs I’ve started and discarded over the past year. So much happens, then another thing happens, then another thing happens, and I end up with a pile of drafts.
Over the past 2+ months, my world has completely changed and I’d like to get this one out while I can. I lost my Momma last month; I came to Michigan as she entered Hospice care in December and it was during that stay that I started this blog. Happy Thoughts started in the dark, they grow in the unknown, and they’re what bring me to the light. This one’s for you, Momma.
There’s a Happy Thought that keeps coming up for me lately,
“Understanding means throwing away your knowledge.”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
I get a lot of push back on this one and it’s been an incredible honor to observe our initial defense of knowing. Before we say, “Why would I throw away what I know?,” we wanna understand what we don’t know, right?
It’s uncomfortable to not know! Whether not knowing is trivial or life changing, we fill those blank spaces like life’s most chaotic Mad Lib.
I like the radical nature of letting go, or “throwing something away.” Letting go and seeing that the world didn’t end quite like we thought it would.
I was a sticker hoarder growing up, never wanting to use a sticker in the wrong place because WHAT WOULD HAPPEN THEN?? I’d never have the opportunity to use that sticker again! And what if it was in the wrong spot!? WHAT WOULD HAPPEN THEN?
Nothing, nothing would happen then.
I’d end up having a sticker collection I’d find later in life because it was tucked away so safely I forgot it ever existed. There is now a little version of me recklessly throwing her hands up in the air when I stick a sticker immediately after receiving it.
Just call me a rebel.
I sold this journal last year in honor of my sticker recovery. Scared to use your stickers? Don’t worry, I did it for you. :)
I’m not saying we all have an unhealthy relationship with stickers, but we’ve all got something we hang onto as irrationally as a haphazard sticker pile (I know I’m not the only one with a sticker complex though).
We try so hard to not let go ALL THE TIME. Losing what we think we know is terrifying, yet it’s what makes room for the magnitudes of what we don’t know.
Loss comes in so many forms: loss of health, loss of space, loss of things, loss of safety, loss of money, loss of security, loss of chatter, loss of silence, loss of friends, loss of love, loss of life. The ultimate loss of loss, I think, is losing the feeling of knowing something.
Recently, I was listening to a talk by Thich Nhat Hanh about surrender and he said “The more you understand, the more you love. The more you love, the more you understand.” I love the simplicity of that. When we want to understand more, all we need to do is love more. The most powerful understanding we will ever emanate is by loving. Love doesn’t hang on, it exists in the let-go.
Over the past couple months, while being present for the knowing and unknowing end of my mom’s life, I watched control slowly ebb away into surrender. As I watched her grapple with new challenging thoughts, it became so clear that in the end, love is literally all that matters. Priorities realign and all the rules are broken.
This life is too fleeting to hoard our stickers. We only have one go at it.
In seize-the-moment fashion, I want to take a minute to honor my Momma’s role with Happy Thoughts. We had a long road and she grew to be the biggest Happy Thought ambassador.
I’ve never seen anyone use Happy Thoughts quite like her.
She was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease ~20 years ago; over the last couple years, we started implementing Happy Thoughts in her challenges (Ok, I started implementing Happy Thoughts in her challenges). We started daily gratitude chats before she had back surgery and during her surgery, I managed my own anxiety by handing Happy Thoughts to every doctor, surgeon, tech, nurse, therapist, and aid we met.
She started managing her own anxiety by handing out Happy Thoughts to patients/staff on her floor as well and had a way higher “yes” rate than I. How could she not when she’d hold out her pile of Happy Thoughts and adorably ask people if they wanted a “Happy Heart?” She’d often give people more than one and say they were “2 for 1 today.” Those Dutch roots ran deep!
When she started Hospice care, she gave everyone who came by the house a Happy Thought. During visits, she’d call me over and remind me to give a Happy Thought; did my heart explode? It might have. I promised her I’d keep handing Happy Thoughts to everyone I met and boy am I keeping that promise.
I am beyond honored and grateful that Happy Thoughts grew to where they grew while she was here; in the weeks since her passing, I’ve seen more and more how they grew to where they grew because she was here.
Thanks, Momma :)
Happy Thoughts are my way of letting go when I don’t know, and I just don’t know right now. I watch these little thought’s fill unknown spaces, over and over again, in unimaginable ways. I’m starting to understand the not knowing is fundamental to what this business has become; the surrender moments are exactly why Happy Thoughts work how they work. I take solace in the knowledge that whatever’'s next for us, will have some celestial Momma guidance.