Part 12

A moment of unasked for kindness from a Barista this morning.

I am struggling with my anxiety in regards to my children and the fact that each of them are young women living in a large city, with all of the dangers inherent in living in a large city,  but beyond my immediate protections.

I experienced a pretty bad moment of this the other night when I could not reach Mara after sending her two texts and a phone call with no response over a period of 3 days.  My vivid imagination got the worst of me and I spent a sleepless night as a result.    It is not something I want to revisit.

Usually when I have bad moments, and know that I need to find a way past them, it is not that I do know how to resolve them, I always know the surest path through them.  This is not the hard part.   The hard part is in fact taking the path that I know I need to take.

A short digression.      There are two philosophies that I have gotten close to lately, and that is the teachings that come out of the I Ching,  and that of Stoicism.    Both of them teach similar approaches to problem solving, which can be reduced down to the twin practices of Patience and Grace.     Sometimes when dealing with a problem, simply stepping back and letting things happen on their own is the true path forward.    Sometimes, just the ability to practice a peaceful Acceptance to surrounding events leads to goals that you want to achieve.    I see these as the twin foundational pillars of Character that I need to move forward with, and in which at this moment of transition in my life, I can  build everything else around.

Return to my point.    So I have these anxieties that led to a horrible night for me.  Patience and Grace show me the correct path, which is to accept the anxieties for what they are, simple Parental anxieties now that Mara and Jana are on their own, and accept with grace that they need to live their own lives and for me to not worry so much.  Let them be.   Let them live their lives.  Take a step back and not worry.

There is a third element here of course that slightly helps me, and that is always remembering myself at their age, and remembering that every time I feel anxiety at one of them not returning a text or a phone call, remembering that I was much worse at their age.   There were months and probably entire years when I was in my 20s where I would not communicate with either of my parents.     After all, I had an intense independent streak, and was in the process of rebuilding myself, so maintaining any kind of communication with a parent during those years was not even part of my thinking.

So knowing the correct the path forward in mitigating my anxieties and being able to sleep at night is  - simply - to step back.    Actually doing this is the hard part.

I give my chances of achieving this at only two stars at this point, but am hopeful that I can supersede these meager expectations. :).

back on the bike.