Photo by Roussety Gregory
Today, on my flight home from Salt Lake City, I had an entire row to myself.
I’d gotten up at 4:55 a.m. for a 6:30 flight. I’d had a relaxing weekend with Clem, but I was tired. Lately I’ve been noticing that even experiences that don’t feel stressful can ask a lot of my body: travel, altitude, not quite enough sleep, being out of my normal rhythms, the quiet energy it takes to be with other people and find my place with Clem and his kids.
(I also left in the dark without my favorite socks. Did I kick them off somewhere, or did one of his dogs carry them to a secret hiding place? The mystery continues.)
So when I saw those three empty seats, I thought: Perfect. I can sleep.
I tucked my backpack under the seat in front of me and stacked my iPad, Kindle, phone, and reading glasses neatly on top. The plan was to nap for a while, read my book, and maybe catch up on some airplane-appropriate busy work.
As the plane accelerated down the runway and began to climb, my tidy little wedding cake tower of technology started sliding backward.
I caught the phone, the Kindle, and the iPad just in time.
But my glasses were gone!
The cabin lights were dimmed, so I turned on my phone’s flashlight and searched under my seat. Nothing.
I looked under the seat behind me. Nothing. I crawled on my hands and knees and searched a few rows farther back. Nothing.
A kind man across the aisle joined the search. “Are you sure you didn’t leave them in the bathroom?” he asked.
I was sure.
And yet, because apparently I trust my own memory less when I’m anxious, I searched my purse. My backpack. The seat pockets. Places I knew perfectly well I hadn’t put them, as if my glasses might have hopped off their perch and tucked themselves away for safekeeping.
Nope.
With nothing left to do, I lay back down to rest.
But I couldn’t.
When Uncertainty Turns Into Fear and Self-Blame
When I tuned in to what I was feeling, I noticed I was afraid.
Not terrified. They were just glasses. I have another pair at home. This was not an emergency, I told myself.
But my nervous system didn’t particularly care about those facts.
And right behind the fear came the self-blame.
Why did you put them there? You knew things might slide. Why weren’t you more careful?
Now I couldn’t read because I didn’t have my glasses. I couldn’t work because I couldn’t see the screen. And I couldn’t take the nap my exhausted body clearly needed because I was too busy worrying about the glasses and scolding myself for losing them.
There was absolutely nothing for me to do except lie across my luxurious three-seat row and breathe.
I’d recently watched The Odyssey, and some slightly dramatic part of me began to wonder whether the gods were playing a trick on me.
Oh, you thought you were going to use this flight productively? Nope. You are going to lie here and practice not knowing. And letting go.
So I tried.
“What are you actually afraid of?” I asked myself.
That my glasses are gone and I won’t get them back.
“Okay. And then what?”
I have another pair at home. I can get home without them. If they’re really gone, I can replace them.
I was safe. And still, there was a little girl inside me who felt she had done something wrong.
Toward the end of the flight, I told a flight attendant what had happened. She searched with her flashlight. Still nothing turned up.
Then another flight attendant came by.
“This is a closed space,” they told me, reassuring me. “You’ll definitely find them.”
They were right, of course. The glasses couldn’t have completely disappeared. They were somewhere on that airplane. I just couldn’t see where yet.
As we descended, the pilot even made an announcement asking everyone to check under their feet before leaving because the passenger in row 20 had lost her glasses.
We touched down, and before anyone stood up, I turned around one more time.
There they were.
One row back, smack dab in the middle of the aisle.
The landing had just shaken them out of hiding.
And suddenly I could see that I’d spent an hour and a half suffering over something that was already okay.
The glasses weren’t lost forever.
I just didn’t know where they were.
Those are not the same thing.
Why Do We Blame Ourselves When Something Goes Wrong?
It reminded me of being a little girl playing ball at my friend Wendy’s house. I was wearing a brand-new pair of Wiggles jeans that I loved, and somehow I fell and ripped the knee.
I remember being furious with myself. I was afraid my mom would be angry because I’d been careless. But when I think about it now, I’m not even sure how angry she actually was.
What I remember most clearly is how angry I was with myself, and how deeply afraid I felt that I’d done something wrong.
Somewhere along the way, I learned that when something goes wrong, I should immediately look for how it’s my fault.
Self-blame became a way of creating control.
If it’s my fault, at least I understand what happened. At least there’s something I could have done differently. Something I can promise myself, if I’m vigilant enough, I’ll never do again.
Because uncertainty asks something much harder of us.
It asks us to admit we don’t know…
I don’t know where the glasses are.
I don’t know how this situation will resolve.
I don’t know what someone else will say.
I don’t know what’s coming next.
Self-Trust Doesn’t Mean Knowing What Will Happen
I’ve been thinking about how easy it is to confuse self-trust with certainty.
We think trusting ourselves means knowing.
Knowing what we want. Knowing what to do. Knowing what the right decision is. Knowing how the story ends.
But there’s a deeper kind of self-trust.
Maybe self-trust is also being able to say, I don’t know how this is going to turn out, and I can trust myself anyway.
- I trust myself to stay with myself while I wait.
- I trust myself to feel afraid without immediately turning that fear into a problem I have to solve.
- I trust myself not to abandon myself by turning on myself.
Maybe my work isn’t always to figure it out or solve the problem.
Maybe sometimes the work is simply to stay present and loving with myself while I don’t know.
To notice the frightened little girl who thinks she’s in trouble and sit beside her instead of scolding her. To tell her: Nothing needs to be solved this second. You are safe. We’ll deal with whatever happens when it happens.
Because sometimes the thing we’re frantically searching for really is lost. Sometimes things don’t turn out the way we hoped. Sometimes there is something we need to do, fix, change, or grieve.
But sometimes what feels like catastrophe is really uncertainty.
Sometimes the glasses are simply one row behind us, waiting for the lights to come on.
And all the fear and self-blame in the world wouldn’t have changed where they were.
I don’t know how this will turn out, but I don’t need to know yet.
I trust myself to meet what comes.
Next time, I hope I can remember that.
And take the nap.
Learning to Trust Yourself
Learning to trust yourself doesn’t mean always having the answer. Sometimes it means learning to hear yourself more clearly, stay with yourself through uncertainty, and move forward without abandoning yourself in the process.
This is the work I explore with women in my one-on-one coaching, women’s groups, and retreats—especially during seasons of transition, change, letting go, and becoming.
If you’re in a moment of your own where you don’t quite know what’s next, but you know something is shifting, learn more about working with me through coaching. Reach out here to set up an introductory consultation.