#75: We’re on a rollercoaster… blindfolded.
When we stop pretending we know what will happen next.
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Writing online about grief and loss is nothing like what I had imagined.
Even though I’d thought I had it all figured out.
By the time I came up with The Luminist’s name (about two years ago, which was four months before I actually published my first post), I was absolutely sure it would play out like this:
I’d talk about everything I’d learned from Mike’s death and its aftermath. I’d lecture about subverting societal expectations. I’d pontificate on consolation and human connection.
I’d quote from my library of books, from newspaper articles, from the Harvard Business Review, weaving my experience with the research of international thought leaders and anecdotes from famous memoirists.
My thoughts would float onto the page — comprehensible, comforting, and empowering on the first try.
You’d be dazzled. You’d be wowed. You’d be changed.
Mission accomplished.
75 posts later, I’ve realized 75 things about how naive I was.
Realization #7: There are no wasted words in writing. Everything that I write and delete (more than you can imagine!) I need to write… and delete. They are integral parts of the process, not mistakes.
Realization #12: Post ideas do not seed, sprout, and grow to maturation all while locked inside my own brain. They are nourished and strengthened by interaction with other brains. There is no idea that is not first talked through with 1-10 people before it lands on the page.
Realization #13: Yes books and the HBR have great quotes. But nothing gets me inspired like talks with Kavon at our 6am workouts, or with Takis on our Monday morning walks.
I’ve been around the block a time or two.
In other words, I’m not some spring chicken who has yet to learn that foxes come out at night. But writing TL has been a startling reminder that I don’t actually know everything. (Kendall says, “I told you so!”)
Sure, I’ve planned and executed international growth strategies that doubled my company’s size. Sure, I got two kids through high school and into college as a single mom. Sure, I looked the reaper straight in the face and then turned his kiss of death into a life of joy. But that doesn’t mean I know how every story will end.
And while it has been humbling — and on occasion downright depressing — to feel like a novice again, it’s also exhilarating.
Realization #27: I need you, dear reader, to create TL. We are symbiotic. I need you for ideas and inspiration and audience participation. I need the little texts on Saturday morning or Tuesday afternoon about how the post made you look at something in your life a little differently.
Realization #33: No one ever knows how their work, their support, their kindness is truly impacting people. So give it away as much as you can, wherever you can, without looking back.
It’s a known psychological fact that humans are terrible at predicting what will make us happy.
Once upon a time, this seemed like a shortcoming. If only we could get our expectations right, we could plan, prepare, strategize, and accordingly live happily ever after.
Right after Mike died, I thought I was going to feel terrible foorreeeevveer. Going forward, happiness would always be beyond my grasp.
But luckily, this was a failure of imagination. Here’s why:
1) Our imaginations are there to help us believe what's possible, not write out the exact play-by-play for what is going to happen. And definitely not cross the potential for joy off the list.
2) Who’s to say how life with a living, breathing Mike would have worked out? Who knows what challenges, losses, struggles we would have faced in that alternate universe.
Realization #48: I start a post and it rarely — well, let’s use the right word: NEVER — ends up being about what I think it’s going to be about.
Realization #49: Writing isn’t reporting. Writing is discovering!
Realization #50: My own writing can change my own perspective.
Realization #57: I love that I never know how a post is going to turn out!
Life is nothing but unpredictable.
From surviving loss to starting a newsletter, the only thing we can be sure of is that we will be surprised.
And isn’t knowing just how little we know actually kind of refreshing?
It gives us permission to experiment, to explore, to learn. To lighten up a bit and enjoy the ride.
If we let it, this world will over and over make us feel like a spring chicken.
Realization #75: I’m not just writing about loss. I’m writing about learning to live fully. Loss has been my main teacher. But it’s not the only option. Any initiation into embracing the unknown, feeling your feelings, and loving like there’s no tomorrow will do.
In pleasant surprise,
I am glad you can write, and be intellectually engaged in your life, and the changes that have come to you and your family’s life, and to all the unknowns to come!!
Appreciate the link to the NPR Hidden Brain piece with Harvard researcher Dan Gilbert. Fantastic tie in to your writing and how the only thing that is predictable is unpredictability! The idea that I will continue to noodle on is how significantly we underestimate our capacity for growth and change. We are never done!