"Just Keep Swimmin'" Through Each Day

Mara here:

I really wish I was an optimist.

I don't think of myself as a hardcore pessimist, but I don't feel positive about things most of the time.

I worry. I have a lot of anxiety. I overthink, and then I crazy overthink some more.

I don't necessarily assume things will go wrong, but I explore all the possibilities because I want to feel prepared. Obviously, though, you can't be prepared for everything, so my mind just sort of spins in circles with how unprepared I am.

It's exhausting.

Once I became a parent, I hoped that my anxiety wouldn't develop in my daughter. I didn't want to project my worries onto her. So I've tried to hide my anxieties as much as possible, so she could form her world view and approach without being tainted by mine.

But, whether through nature or nurture, Malia has developed the tendency to worry. I'm hoping some of it is due to her age (hormones) and her current environment (extremely stressful Junior year of high school—which they say is the hardest). But I'm sure some of it is genetic, and some of it is that, as much as I've tried to mask my anxiety, most of us can't really hide who we are from those we are closest to.

So my daughter has been struggling with fears and doubts and periodic moments of depression.

And as a mother who suffers from the same issues, it's been really difficult for me to handle Malia's struggles. On top of having the struggles with my own life, the guilt and pain I feel when I see Malia struggling is sometimes overwhelming.

It makes it hard for me to know how to advise her. I want to be the type of parent who can honestly look at her child and say, "Everything will be okay." I want to be the type of person who actually feels like everything will be okay. But I'm not. I have always felt a bit suspicious. When I'm having a really bad time, sometimes I wonder if things will ever not feel bad.

When Malia was little, it was easier for me to tell her that things would be okay because, for the most part, I could actually make things okay for her. But now that she's older and she's out there in the world on her own for much of the time so I can't make those same promises.

And so, when she recently asked me how people live, even if they don't feel like they have anything to live for, I was speechless for a moment. She wasn't being dramatic. It wasn't about being suicidal. It wasn't about wanting to die. She was simply asking the age old question: "What is the point of life?"

And I didn't know how to answer. So I said, "Honestly honey, I don't know."

Well, she didn't like that answer at all.

So, after going back and forth with her about what the point of life is and why people don't just commit suicide, I said, "The only thing I do know about life is that you have to just keep moving forward. You keep doing things because you never know what will happen. You might think you know. And things might not change for a stretch of time. But everything eventually changes."

And for some reason when I said that, the image of the character of Dory from the animated film Finding Nemo popped into my head. She was the character (voiced by Ellen DeGeneres) who only had short term memory. So she would swim around saying "Just keep swimmin'" because she couldn't ever remember why she was swimming or where she was going. But she knew she'd get somewhere eventually.

And for me, that really does encapsulate life. You have to keep going and eventually you get somewhere. And sometimes we like where we get and sometimes we don't. But it never stays the same if we just keep moving forward.

I have to remind myself of this when I have sudden flashes of feeling stuck or when panic overcomes me because things feel mysteriously and suddenly bad.

When this happens, I breathe and remind myself that it won't feel bad forever. And I tell myself this, even though there's a part of my brain that always doubts it; but thinking the thought is the first step. Then I force myself to do something—anything—because if I can make myself do something, there's a good chance my emotional state will change. So I'll do the dishes or I'll watch a cat video on YouTube. 

And sometimes the feeling passes, and sometimes it doesn't. But even when the feeling lingers, I've at least reminded myself that the feeling is just a feeling. It's not actually a physical block keeping me from doing things in my life.

It's amazing how physical our emotions feel. Depression really can sometimes make me feel as if my body can no longer function. But if you're lucky, and have a support system or access to therapy, you learn to recognize those feelings as not true, and you learn to push through them.

And today, in the midst of Malia feeling in a bit of funk for the past couple of months, out of the blue I got a call that was a pleasant surprise for her. An opportunity to do something fun. Totally unexpected. Not something we could have anticipated or even guessed. (For those who are curious, she was asked to assist by running sound at the casting call for dancers for the upcoming Shania Twain tour. So she'll get to sit with the choreographer—the amazing Mandy Moore—and see the casting experience from the other side of the table. Plus she'll be earning some money!)

It's nothing earth shattering—nothing huge—but just something really nice. And it was a real in-the-moment example of how you never know what might happen. It's a great reminder that change and new experiences are always out there, sometimes just around the corner.

So much of my life has been, and still is sometimes, spent worrying about the future. But I know that, even if I can't always control it, worrying is just energy wasted. Especially when the worry is that nothing will ever change. Life always changes. Sometimes we get stuck and it feels like nothing's changing, but even if it's slow, change is happening.

Thankfully, I've developed a level of confidence in knowing that if I want change, I can create change. More importantly, I know that even though my brain sometimes tries to trick me by telling me the future is bad, I don't know what it holds. I do know that my brain doesn't know as much as it thinks it does!

I've learned that no matter what I'm feeling that I can keep going. I can keep swimming.

(P.S. In case anyone wonders, I do always have surprising moments of bliss. So the brain really is tricky. And I don't want people to think all my sudden moods are negative. I have a full range of mood swings. I'm super fun to live with 😉.)

Here are some questions I asked my mom about this subject:

What is the Buddhist approach to dealing with the question of living with what is perceived as a constant state of unhappiness?

The Buddha was very realistic about life. I like to say he "told it as it is." And, "as it is" includes not being happy all the time. He spoke of what I call The Buddha's List (this is in the first noble truth). It's a list of experiences that all of us can expect to encounter at one time or another during our lifetimes: birth, aging, illness, death, sorrow, pain, grief, getting what we don't want, not getting what we want, and losing what we cherish (including loved ones).

I appreciate that he prepared me in this way so that I wasn't swept away by life's hard times and disappointments.

As I see it, he wasn't being negative. He was just trying to prepare us for life. And he didn't say that life consists only of these experiences! Life is a mixed bag and, for that reason, I take refuge in a universal law that the Buddha also emphasized: impermanence. 

Mara, you write about this in your piece when you say that, as miserable as one day might be, something that will make you happy may be just around the corner (like the unexpected phone call Malia got). I write a lot about impermanence. Readers of my books will know that I use the weather as a metaphor for life: unpredictable, uncertain, and impermanent. 

Yes, this can be a source of unhappiness but, for me, when I'm having an everything's-going-wrong day or when I'm in a funk (yes, I do get in funks), I know that everything is impermanent and that's soothing and reassuring to me. 

I've written a lot of pieces for Psychology Today on how to skillfully deal with tough times. Here are some of those pieces in case readers would like to read them (the last one contains my commentary on some helpful and inspiring quotations on this subject): 

"A Secret for Surviving a Rough Day"
"When You're Down and Out: Getting Through the Bad Days"
"Learning the Live Gracefully with Change and Uncertainty"

Knowing you, I know that you've never been suicidal, but with your illness, have you ever questioned the meaning of your life?

I don't think you can get to be my age without questioning the meaning of life. I have many times...and my current answer may be out of the mainstream, but here it is: I don't think there's a particular meaning to life. To me, life is a mystery, but although a mystery, the fact is we're here, and so, in my view, we should make the best of it by treating ourselves and others with kindness, by helping people out whenever we can, and by doing things that are fulfilling and enjoyable to us. 

I don't mind that life is a mystery. There's an ancient poem by Setcho Juken I've lived by for so many years that I put it at the beginning of my very first book, How to Be Sick:

One, seven, three, five—
Nothing to rely on in this or any world;
Nighttime falls and the water is flooded with moonlight.
Here in the Dragon's jaws:
Many exquisite jewels.

Yes, many exquisite jewels. You and Malia are two of them.