© Stefaanh./Dreamstime.com
Last week, I did something I’ve never done before in my
life: I went for a session with a psychic. Now, I could tell you all about what
she revealed to me; it was quite fascinating and certainly nothing I expected,
but this occasion was important to me not because of what the soothsayer said, but because I actually wasn’t afraid to
hear it. I looked into the future and felt no fear.
In the
past, psychics, mediums, channelers, fortunetellers and the like scared me to
pieces. Was I afraid of their dark tents
that smelled of incense, or of their rather seedy looking digs along a certain
New Jersey highway? Was it their chalky make-up, their crystal balls, or their
tarot cards? No, what scared me most about psychics and their ilk was what they
might say about my future. I simply didn’t want to know. What if there was
something horrible waiting around the bend? What if they looked at my palm and
saw a telltale line? What if they looked into my eyes and read my most secret
thoughts? What if…what if?
Long ago,
when my children were little I wrote a scene in one of my stories about a day I
could see in my future. I described how my children had grown; how they
now had size ten feet, and gruff voices, how they bantered about Dante, politics,
and football, how they could eat several pizzas in one sitting or knock off a
gallon of milk. This vision of my future terrified me (and not only because my
hair, in this vision, was decidedly graying). What terrified me was my loss of
self, the loss of the woman and mother I thought I wanted to always be, the
mother of three young boys who drove me nuts but were lots of fun, little boys who needed to be read
stories, needed rides to cub scouts, or help with their homework. Little boys I could scoop up into my arms (not who could lift me off the floor!)
But now
that I’m living that scene I realize that there was nothing to be afraid of. My
older kids are hilarious, intellectually stimulating, and quite helpful
(especially when my computer is down). Yeah, my hair is starting to gray, but
I’m actually healthier mentally and physically than I was a decade ago. I love
little kids, but truth be known, the big kids tell better jokes, get the jokes
I tell, and thankfully know how to bathe, feed themselves, and drive. The
terrible future I so feared is here now, and it’s, as we used to say back in
the day, “quite a trip,” and in a good way.
I’m in no
hurry to get to the future, but it doesn’t scare me any more, and that’s why I
could look that psychic in the eye and say, “What do you see?” I now am of the
belief that anything that’s in my personal crystal ball (and in yours) is there
for a reason. The things we fear the most (like having our children grow up)
may bring unforeseen blessings. The scary things our minds make up are probably
never going to happen (and even if they do, they will come with some lessons we
need to learn).
View the future as a miracle
instead of a potentially hazardous unknown, and fear will vanish. Like the wise
man said, we have nothing to fear but fear itself.
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