Last Friday night, I was getting ready for a big formal fundraising event that Pete and I attend every year. And, as some of you can imagine, there was makeup spread all across the bathroom counter as well as enough hair tools and products for a dozen women. I was in full primping mode, with one eye on the clock. We were being picked up at 6pm sharp. I had already promised to be in the driveway, waiting with Pete.
And then, right in the middle of all that primping, my hair dryer stopped. Apparently, it had overheated and dutifully shut itself off. It’s a brilliant safety mechanism for all hair dryers and other hot hair tools—if they overheat, they shut themselves off for a rest.
And, since I have been through this a hundred times before, I knew that the only thing to do was honor the rest. Honor the basic fact that when machines shut themselves down, they will be ready to resume work when they are good-and-ready.
And since my adorable mind is always looking for metaphors for Life, I actually grinned when my hair dryer turned itself off. It was just too obvious how humans are designed to do this exact same thing! When our minds get super-hot or intense, there is something inside of us that deeply knows—step away. Take a pause. Tap out.
We see this everywhere. A football coach notices his player on the field getting too intense so he calls a timeout. A musician realizes she’s making the same mistake over and over again, and then steps away from the instrument for a break. A writer closes the laptop. A surgeon pauses before the next move in the procedure. A computer freezes, and it occurs to us to turn it off and give it a few minutes to cool down.
We trust the wisdom of stepping back almost everywhere—until the problem feels important.
The moment something seems truly high-stakes, we become convinced that stepping back would be irresponsible. We think the importance of the situation requires more attention, more analysis, more planning, more vigilance, more hours spent mentally walking through every possible outcome.
We keep the system running hotter and hotter because surely this is not the time to stop.
Someone we love is sick. A relationship is changing or maybe even ending. One of our kids is struggling, our workload feels daunting, our finances are in the red, or our body is doing all kinds of unexpected tricks. There are actual bills to pay, doctors’ appointments to schedule, and work deadlines looming. The medical reports and bank balances are there in black and white.
We’re never pretending these things aren’t real on some level.
But these things are all part of the surface-level slice of reality—the part that I like to think of as the 1% layer of reality. The details may be real, but that 1% layer of reality is like a thin, gauzy blanket laid over top of the other 99% of reality that the human brain has not evolved to perceive or interpret.
And then we forget that our mind is always taking that tiny, thin surface layer of reality and presenting it as The Truth of Life.
We believe the narrative in our head is all we have. We forget that we have within us, an entire other realm that is timeless and stable.
And that is where our brilliant nervous systems get to become our greatest allies.
Believing the narratives that play incessantly in our minds HURTS.
It HURTS to believe the narrative of a revved up, worried, anxious, hot-running mind.
What a gift when our body becomes so attuned to those false beliefs hiding below the top layer of facts that it goes from whispering to shouting. It goes from butterflies in the belly to pounding heart and shaky knees. It goes from a slight tension in the shoulders to a full-body tightness that feels like a boa constrictor. We begin to wake up from the trance of the narrative.
Last week in Office Hours, Debbie described a week filled with one crisis after another. Her son’s husband had been in an accident. A friend was suffering, a grandchild was suffering. Something challenging was unfolding in the family business. It was a LOT. And as each new event arrived, Debbie noticed herself gripping around it, mentally carrying it, worrying—as though the strength of her worry might somehow hold the Universe perfectly in place.
Thankfully, her very attuned body became loud. And as we have said time and again, this brilliant attunement in the body often expresses itself as louder-than-ever symptoms.
In the middle of that loudness, something broke through Debbie’s trance. Something came through with absolute clarity:
This is God’s territory. You’re stepping into God’s territory. Step BACK.
When Debbie said those words last week, I felt the truth of them move through my own body hundreds of miles away.
It is not our job to hold it all together, to plan for every possible outcome, and to protect and secure every person, event, and circumstance. In fact, it is EXHAUSTING by design.
Worry pretends to be important.
But worrying, ruminating, and mentally planning every possible future outcome cannot be our jobs. Controlling what happens next, making certain everyone will be okay, mentally traveling into every possible future so that we can secure the most comfortable outcomes—well, that’s God’s territory. Life’s territory. The Universe’s territory.
Whatever you call that Great Mystery that somehow manages to spin the planets and grow the acorns into Oak trees without one ounce of help from you—THAT same Great Mystery also holds your family members, the illnesses, the finances, and the relationships.
Ironically, from that space of deep TRUST that Debbie described, something beautiful tends to happen. In the ABSENCE of holding so tightly to the proverbial steering wheel, actions are taken. Bodies move. Words are spoken. Calls are made. But without the added pressure and angst of all of the mind’s narratives of “it shouldn’t be like this” and “I can’t handle it.”
About a year ago, my dad was rushed to the hospital. I believe I told you about it soon after it happened. My mom called me from her car, and she was a MESS. She knew that something was happening with his heart, but she had not been allowed to ride in the ambulance with him, so she was driving herself to UNC Hospital in Chapel Hill.
I immediately dropped everything, got in my car, and headed toward the hospital.
At some point during that drive, my mind began doing exactly what minds tend to do when we are afraid. It raced ahead of me to the hospital. It tried to see inside the ambulance. It tried to know what was happening with my dad’s heart. It began asking how in the world I would help my mom.
All completely normal, human, loving freak-out thoughts.
But THANKFULLY my body became SO loud as I drove down the highway that I began to feel as though I might pass out while driving.
The worry was filling the entire car. I was trying to drive to the hospital while also somehow reaching into an ambulance miles ahead of me, keeping my dad alive, preparing my mom for every possible outcome, and figuring out how I would survive something that had not even happened.
I was worrying with all my might. Just like Debbie.
And then, out of absolutely nowhere, came this quiet little thing. It’s hard to describe because it did not feel like a thought, really. It was a whoosh throughout my body that started at the top of my head and whooshed down through my torso.
Missy, this isn’t yours.
Set it down.
NOW.
And in that second, everything stopped. Not the situation, of course. Nothing in the surface details of reality had changed one but. But in that moment of Missy, this isn’t yours. Set it down. NOW, the intense worrying stopped. I tapped out. Or, more accurately, tapping out just happened. It made NO sense to stay in those thoughts.
The imaginary preparation for every possible future stopped. There was just driving—my hands on the steering wheel, the road in front of me, the next exit, and the actual moment I was in.
And somehow, before I had any answers, I was deeply okay.
I did not suddenly know that my dad would be fine. I had no idea what I would find when I arrived. I had not reasoned my way toward a more comforting interpretation. I was simply no longer standing in God’s territory trying to hold my father’s heart together from the driver’s seat of my car.
My dad’s heart was not mine to control. The ambulance was not mine to supervise. The outcome was not mine to arrange.
What I would be asked to meet when I arrived had not arrived yet.
And once I set down what did not belong to me, I became fully available for what did.
Driving. Listening to the doctors once I arrived at the hospital. Sitting beside my parents. Helping with whatever needed helping.
I was able to be present with my mom and dad for the remainder of that day, through the night, and into the next morning.
Tapping out did not take me away from my parents. It returned me to them.
This feels like such a huge distinction. We don’t tap out so that we can remove ourselves from Life. We tap out to be returned home to who we really are.
And maybe this is the deeper meaning of tap out. We are not tapping out of love. We are tapping out of the false belief that worry is love, that worry is helpful.
We are not stepping away from the people who need us. We are stepping back from God’s territory so that all of our internal resources can be fully restored to us.
How much of our exhaustion comes from attempting to perform a job that was never ours?
Thankfully, like the over-heated hair dryer, our bodies, in all of their brilliance, remind us to tap out. Step Back. Take a break from the hot energy expressing as spinning thoughts in the mind.
Take a walk. Close the laptop. Put down the phone. Watch something hilarious on TV. Sit outside with the dog. Let the hair dryer cool down.
Or do none of those things and simply notice: Ohhh. I have wandered into God’s territory. That alone might be exactly the Great Interrupter you need to tap out of the mind’s narrative.
Tapping out is not a trick for getting the answer. It is a small act of trust. It says, Life can continue moving without my constant mental supervision.
This is what I mean when I say Life is Life-ing.
It is not a spiritual promise that everything will unfold according to our preferences. I have no idea how things will unfold.
But I do know that Life always keeps arriving as this moment, and then this one, and then this one. Life expresses itself perfectly. As this. And then this.
Life does not always arrive looking like forward motion. Sometimes Life arrives as stop. Sometimes it arrives as step back. Sometimes it arrives as this isn’t yours. Sometimes it arrives as tap out.
Today may contain a phone call you didn’t want, a hard conversation, a doctor’s appointment, a form that needs to be signed, a child who needs us, or a body asking for care. We can meet all of that. Human action still happens. Choices still happen. Love still moves our feet.
Maybe we can stop solving Life and allow Life to show us the next thing. Not all of it. Just the next thing.
Life has the rest. Its trustworthiness is timeless and stable.
It’s got you.
It’s OK to set down the hard thing for a while and go play.
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair—yours.
And I’ll tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies,
and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese,
high in the clear blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are,
no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese,
harsh and exciting—
over and over
announcing your place in the family of things.
By Mary Oliver Wood