What if it turns out well?

Some time ago, I was in for a surprise – once again. It wasn’t the first reminder that nothing is ever cast in stone and the only constant is change. 

During a videocall with two very knowledgeable advisors from the German and the Dutch Statutory Pension Authorities, I gained a lot of insights into my quite complex pension situation as an expat. Getting that clarity helped me to better put things in perspective. Although my situation remains complex and some of it scary and unclear, new possibilities came into view.

I had imagined walking on a narrowing pathway with a shrinking number of options – which was simply not true, and in all fairness it almost never is. There are always options, always choices. Things can change into either direction – some beneficial, some unfavorable. 

Dealing with uncertainty is uncomfortable but there’s always a chance. The overall takeaway for me was: What if things actually turn out well?

We usually assume the opposite dreading the worst case scenario: What if?

What if I lose my job and can’t find another one? What if my pension gap doesn’t allow me to live in this place I call home anymore? What if I get seriously ill? What if I lose a person dear to me? What if I completely lose my marbles when I get older?

Honestly, who would really like to dive into their future pension situation, especially if it’s not that straightforward? I had been procrastinating on it and instead spent my time worrying about the bits and pieces I knew to be problematic.

Especially the possibility of having to leave my home and moving somewhere else had occupied my thoughts and upset me for quite a while.

My mother got uprooted by world war II, had to flee her home when she was very young and could never return. Since then she carried this scar on her soul turning her into a sad and anxious person. With that in mind, everything in me resisted a similar notion becoming a reality for me, especially since I found my home only some 11 years ago – quite late in my life.

Chances are that not everything I worry about will come true, or maybe not exactly as imagined and it could be manageable. From past experience I know there is always a choice, no matter what. Weird how we easily forget about that, so ready to step into the same worrying circle once the next challenge comes along.

I cannot foresee things and don’t control most of my life. We don’t get to choose what happens to us – but we have a choice what to do about it. And sometimes that means having trust in the unknown and myself, taking one step at a time and asking for help.

To accept the increasing level of uncertainty is part of the deal, as scary as it is. What’s the alternative anyway? Worrying does not change anything. I am trying to make my peace with not knowing it all and not having all the answers, but I find myself struggling.

Constant change does offer a chance for things to work out for me, but does that make it any easier for me to let go? Not striving for control, not being able to determine the outcome? Having that trust is not easy at all. Maybe that’s my stumbling stone: I am afraid that I might not be able to handle well what comes along.

At my age things somehow feel heavier, scarier. I often catch myself remembering how I moved through life when I was younger, and how many things I did not realize then, how unfazed I was, how naive. 

Wondering why I did not see what I see now, why I perceived life so differently. Of course, I also worried then, but now the intensity is higher. In hindsight, things always become clearer. I could not know then what I do know now. Experience has shaped and changed me.

We commonly glorify past time periods thinking “everything was so much better or easier back then because xy did not exist”, but that’s nothing but a misconception. We simply were not aware of what was concealed behind the curtain. We couldn’t possibly know. 

And now? Life in the digital age has become far more complex, accelerating, its pace head-spinning. We feel overwhelmed by total transparency, are bombarded with too much information, and unfortunately, the focus is largely on the bad stuff. The veil has been lifted and it’s deeply unsettling.

But that’s not all. I am older now, in many ways less resilient, more tired, and feeling exhausted faster due to my different energy level. I know so much more now about myself, about life, and therefore, I notice more. Once you see you can’t un-see things anymore.

Life and its volatility feel far more intense. It impacts how I perceive uncertainty and it increases my fears and worries. On the other hand, what I have learnt working through my trauma enables me to navigate the obstacles life throws at me so much better.

Knowledge, even wisdom come attached with a price tag – I understand that now. I wouldn’t want to give back the valuable insights I have gained, but on the other hand I am well aware that they make my life more difficult. They are are a precious gift but feel like a curse at the same time. That’s an interesting dilemma to be faced with, and for sure I’m not the only one who feels that way.

Back to “what if it turns out well?”

Just because we can’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there.That goes for the sun and everything else, like the path I do not see yet or the changes that are about to happen.

When a dark cloud moves in we just need to wait until the sky clears up again to find that the sun was never gone.

But without the darkness we don’t appreciate the light. 

What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The right choice only exists in the present moment

A friend of mine who recently moved back to her home country after living and working a long time abroad in Kenia expressed her struggles to adapt, feeling torn between the two worlds and questioning whether she made the right decision.

Does this really exist: the right decision? It feels all too familiar to me: wanting to get it right, therefore spending time considering a lot of facts before making a decision. I did this often in my life. But nobody can get it perfectly right because everything is subject to change and we just aren’t clairvoyants. We don’t know how the future will unfold. 

And we could never possibly know all facts, all parametres anyway. In hindsight, we will know more, but in the very moment of decision-making we did not. 

But even with an abundance of facts and carefully weighing pros and cons, there is no guarantee that I get it right or will feel happy about it afterwards. It could work out either way.

That’s my experience with moving to other countries. Knowing a lot before making the move did not spare me inner conflict or struggles. Knowing less and following an impulse, a feeling can surprisingly work out very well on the other hand.

There is a reason why human decisions are very much based on feelings rather than facts. Where AI is binary – we most certainly are not. Only I can know if something feels right for me, but my feelings can also be quite complex and ambivalent. 

Allowing myself to rely on my intuition as an important part of what we humans call decision-making is essential, instead of pretending that it is just a fact-based process.


May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears. 

(Nelson Mandela)

Moreover, decisions are always a choice, a reflection of my current circumstances and mindset. And all that inevitably evolves and changes.

It makes no sense to blame myself for a decision I made in the past. At that moment I was in a different place and in a different situation. I did not know what I know today. I was younger. My values, preferences, priorities were different, and so were my mood and my emotions. 

Things change. We change. Our perspective changes over time. Our level of maturity evolves, our health changes. 

And so we make the best decision we can under these circumstances at that point in time. That is enough.

Since I came to understand this, I don’t view it in the right/wrong context anymore. This isn’t black or white. 

The need I felt for a long time, to take the “right” decision was deeply rooted in perfectionism which developed during my childhood when I was not allowed to make mistakes. Recognizing it helped me change my perspective. 

The right choice – if I can call it that – is always a temporary thing: it only exists in the time and space we inhabit in the present moment.

Now when I make a choice I know it’s to either stay on the path I am on or take a turn somewhere at a crossroads which will spin me into a different direction. Every choice has consequences and only time will tell if I remain comfortable with them or whether I will feel the need one day to make an adjustment and take another turn.

It has a lot to do with personal values and priorities: what’s important to me? What do I need in my life? It always comes down to these questions. And we need to liberate us from other people’s expectations in this regard. I’m the one who has to live with my choice – not someone else.

Just like healing, our life journey is never unfolding in a straight line. There are lots of turns or doubling back, and that is perfectly ok. My priorities change as well over time because I am not the same person I was years ago.

Being torn between two sides facing contradictory feelings after making a choice is very normal. Again, nothing is black or white.

But no matter what we decide – even if a decision turns out not to be the optimal one – we always gain insights. We grow and develop new interests and suddenly new opportunities come our way. It’s interesting to see where life takes us when we are open. We only realize it in hindsight.

A very personal example for me is an unhappy relationship I had in my twenties. A positive event during that time however, was a holiday we spent in Ireland.
I fell in love with this country immediately. Some time later it led me to do a four months’ stage in Dublin, which in turn sparked my wish to come back to live and work in Ireland, something I eventually managed to do.  

That was a clear turning point in my life, starting to work for an international company and then, many years later moving to the Netherlands. 

I would not be where I am today had it not been for that holiday in Ireland decades ago. Many wonderful friends I found that way – some at work, some by chance encounters – I would have never met. Finding a place I call home, gaining insights about myself – sometimes through tough experiences – I am grateful for what I encountered. 

So I clearly cannot say that if I could go back in time I’d make a different choice, because then I’d be a different person with a different life. 

There is no alternative universe to explore – this life is all we have got.

Let’s make the best out of it.

Creating my own Christmas ritual


“Every time I say yes because I want validation, I am secretly rejecting myself.” That sentence I heard on the Lewis Howes podcast (episode 1828) is so true.

It made me think about how often I did that in the past. Agreeing to do something – not because I wanted it – but because I wanted to please others or just to have my peace or to avoid conflict, out of guilt or a misunderstood sense of duty or obligation. 

A typical example: going to my parents at Christmas almost every year of my life, even though I knew it would be a stressful time with lots of conflict. I could never fully relax due to the challenges my mom’s mental situation brought about. And journeying into Germany with its chronically unreliable public transport posed an additional challenge, especially before and after Christmas when lots of people were traveling. 

Looking back I realized that except for 3 or 4 times (when I was either ill or it was due to covid restrictions) I always went to my parents’ place at Christmas time. And so did my brother with his family.

It simply felt like a duty. I wanted to be a “good daughter” hence saw no other realistic option, and I wanted to avoid endless discussions and conflict. 

Year after year though I was longing for a more peaceful Christmas time, hoping that “this time it will be different”. In the weeks before Christmas I mentally prepared myself with my favourite Christmas music, carefully planning how to spend the days together. I never gave up on hope. In the end, sometimes there were less conflicts, but overall it was exhausting. 

I really like Christmas time and want to enjoy it, but reality was so much different from what I imagined and longed for. My mom overburdening everyone with her unrealistic expectations and her denial of reality had me on edge the whole time. 

Maybe celebrating Christmas is much more enjoyable when spending it with good friends who understand and respect each others’ boundaries. As weird as it sounds: even though Christmas is supposed to be a family celebration, this concept does not seem to work at all in many families.

Often I became ill after Christmas – the stress took its toll on me. When I traveled back to my place after the festive days, I always felt a wave of relief the moment I stepped onto the train, and once I got home I needed a few days to relax and get back into balance.

I never really considered using these days for staying by myself or going on vacation. Of course there are alternatives which would either allow for more restful, peaceful days, recharging your energy and enjoying the silence, or going on a trip and exploring interesting locations.

This year, after moving my parents to a care home because they could not take care of themselves anymore, I finally got to understand that taking off time for myself and prioritizing my needs is not selfish at all. It makes much more sense to visit my parents at different times, but not during the busy festive season. 

When speaking about it with a longterm friend of mine, she actually told me that she handled it that way with her dad, who in fact was the one who made it clear to her that he did not expect her to visit him at Christmas. Hearing that story something clicked into place in my head. 

So I gave it some thought and decided it’s about time that I create my own personal Christmas ritual and do what feels right for me. 

And that means: this year, I am spending Christmas eve at my home. Listening to Christmas carols and Celtic music, my Christmas tree – my memory tree – gleaming into the night. It’s cold and quiet outside and from time to time I am looking at my neighbours’ glimmering Christmas lights on their balconies and in their front gardens.

It feels good. I am much more at ease. It makes me wonder now why I did not start to question my automatic response pattern to please others years ago. Some habits are hard to break, but it’s never too late to do so. 

It’s certainly a process and I only managed it because I realized that I had to let go. Letting go of feeling responsible for my parents’ happiness, of feeling obliged and a sense of guilt. It’s not easy. A big part is acknowledging that I have no control over how other people feel.

On the 2nd Christmas Day I will take the ferry to my favourite Dutch island Terschelling and return after New Year. Enjoying peace and quiet and clean air, taking walks in the heather, the woods and at the sea, reading a lot, resting. 

Being on this island is always so deeply relaxing for me. Each time I feel refreshed and calm when I return home. It’s the perfect place for me to recharge and start the New Year well.

Wishing you all a happy and peaceful festive season, wherever you are.