Tag: change

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.

Inviting unpredictability

Have a little faith. There is no black and white situation. Things always change. There is no inevitability in how an event unfolds – even if I think (or wish) there must be.

How often have I experienced that things turned out much better than expected, but before they did I was fretting about them a lot and at length. 

Of course, it is always good to be prepared and to think things through, considering options and alternatives. Nothing wrong with doing my due diligence. But often, even that turned out to be not necessary at all.

So I am trying to have more patience and trust, ultimately having confidence that things can sometimes turn out well. Adjusting my expectations and not always assuming a negative outcome by default has become an important practice for me. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

There is also a flip side of course. Life is unpredictable. 

We don’t have a lot under control, but we are deluding ourselves that we do. I am very familiar with this behaviour, because I am a planner. Fear of bad events (real or imagined) is driving my need for control. 

Well, life doesn’t work like that. I am so used to attempting to eliminate bad surprises and trying to get on top of all important tasks in my life – but I know my wish is a mere illusion. 

It’s much more liberating to let go of this idea – an idea essentially rooted in perfectionism. Herein lies the real inevitability: that I am unable to control the outcome of life events.


Become comfortable with not knowing.

Eckhart Tolle

Allowing myself to experience conflicting emotions is part of the package. Questioning from time to time if I am on the right path is fully ok – I just need to hang in there. 

Letting go of things I cannot control, again and again, is important, but it’s also a real struggle. 

That’s what I learnt during the past months. Unfortunately, my parents are not happy in the care home they are living in. Of course, it was a big change at a very late point in their lives and they are understandably upset. They are grieving what they lost, lacking the strength and willpower to adjust to their new situation. Their cognitive decline makes it harder.

The aggression and resistance my brother and I were confronted with really hurt though. It’s sad to see them making themselves so unhappy. It was the right decision to move them and we waited a long time before going through with it. It’s a relief to know that they are not alone anymore and have all the help and support they need. 

We had the best intentions but of course no control over the outcome. And that’s exactly what can happen: you do something for all the right reasons, but someone else is unhappy as a result. 

I had hoped for them to make the best out of this situation and focus on the benefits it clearly has for them, but they don’t want to see it.


The moment you accept what troubles you’ve been given, the door will open.

Rumi

To acknowledge all this, my role in it and how it made me feel, was difficult. I struggled a lot with these conflicting emotions, feeling lost, angry and sad. 

In the weeks that followed I took the time to process it all, focused on protecting myself and on letting go, bit by bit. With time, I felt lighter, easing back into balance.

Where people’s emotions are involved, things get messy. Personal sensitivities have a large influence on their decisions and override the facts of reality quite often. It’s never to be underestimated. It can be a source of hope but can also turn out to be a recipe for disaster. We just never know in advance – and that’s life.

Nevertheless, this is the tiny space where hope is living. Between the black and the white.

There is always potential in every situation, even if I cannot see it in the very moment I am in it. It can turn out either way and there is not a lot we can do about it besides inviting unpredictability into our lives, fully knowing that it’s not going to be easy. 

Ultimately, have trust in what will unfold. It’s not in our hands (not always or not fully anyway most of the time), but that does not have to be a bad thing.

Have trust. In yourself and in life.


Don’t be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart.

Roy T. Bennett