timing

I stayed up past two a.m. last night (this morning?) and then woke up before seven because I was reading a book and couldn’t put it down. It’s a book I put off buying for a while—a trilogy, actually—and I wasn’t sure why I put it off, since it’s by one of my favorite authors, except I didn’t feel like it, I guess. But then I suddenly needed to read it (them), so I bought ‘em. And as I read the first one last night (this morning?), I came across two book references as well as a shout out to a TV show I’d only very recently read/watched. I wouldn’t have understood the references if I’d read the book earlier. Now that I had, I felt like I was in on the jokes.

It weirded me out, honestly. Because what the hell kind of timing is that?

The references weren’t recent or even super-trendy books/TV shows. Like, at all.

So, what kind of sorcery was going on?

I could treat the timing like it was coincidence. I just happened to read two classic novels and an older TV show in the past few weeks before reading this book. Or I could treat the timing like there’s some other force going on that has a sense of humor—or perhaps a keen sense of what it is I need to do and the order in which to do it.

Most of the time, I act on intuition. Sometimes I say it’s my informed or educated gut. And sometimes I simplify and say it’s just experience. But I know my basis for most decisions has gotta be on some kind of intuition. If I’m acting on intuition, though, it must mean there is something to intuit—some force I’m tapping into, perhaps.

And that’s too big a question for me to contemplate or attempt to answer.

It did get me thinking, though, about anxiety. Because I often feel anxious and it’s usually because I feel like I should be doing something other than I’m doing. Or doing something faster. More important. Better.

Anxiety keeps me from chilling and letting my life unfold naturally.

But if I follow my gut on reading order and when to one-click, and that paid off beautifully, then perhaps I need to trust that other things could work the same way. I mean, does this amusing coincidence only work in deep understanding of a beautifully-written billionaire romance novel? Or can it apply to other areas of my life? Ones with more consequences? Like, when to publish a book. When to make a call. When to change something that isn’t working.

I’m no psychologist or mental health professional, so what I’m writing could be wrong. But I often feel my anxiety comes from a lack of trust. Lack of trust in the process and lack of trust that all can be well.

It’s not helpful for me to say (to myself), “Trust the process.” That’s like telling an upset person to “Calm down.” Like that ever helps.

So, how do I develop that trust? Because it seems to me if I could trust the timing of things, trust that I’m going to read the references before I read the book that sums them up, then life could be a whole lot easier and more enjoyable.

I wouldn’t have to suffer.

(Because anxiety is suffering. It just is.)

The logical answer is, I learn to trust through experience. Through actually trusting and seeing what happens. And learning that it often ends up exactly the way it’s supposed to.

Intuiting something this “small” has given me a lot to think about. And more, some experience on which I can learn to trust, and perhaps be less anxious.

I’m curious if this has ever happened to any of you? If you held off on doing something, and you couldn’t say quite why, except that the actual timing you chose ended up being perfect?

When I searched in Unsplash for “Coincidence,” it gave me this picture.

Coincidence