Trust & Hope

While riding home from San Diego on the train I met a young woman who I had the good fortune of striking up a conversation with. Not surprisingly (given the way the Universe has been busy in my life lately) I learned that she was going through some of the same decisions in life that I was. Facing some of the same fears.

Living in LA, she had been working for a production company until relatively recently when she was let go. Yes, the production business in LA (well, anywhere really) is pretty volatile but, interestingly, she was let go because the owner felt that...essentially...her heart wasn't in the work. And, she admits, he was right.

And while she admitted that being let go was really a great thing in the end, she still had lots of anxiety about how to support herself trying something she had always wanted to do: write. Over the months just before I met her, write she did! And, all credit to her, sold her old bosses on a screenplay she'd written. A sale she made when she was, literally, down to her last few dollars in the bank.

Now, you would think that she would be ecstatic. Delirious! She'd powered through and made it out of the tunnel of darkness and into the light! And, yes, in many ways she had.

But that commercial success wasn't nearly enough "good karma" to counterbalance what really was weighing on her mind: grief over the loss of a relationship she deeply cared about.

In speaking with her about how in the world she could possibly...even after a year...escape from the deep despair she felt and end the longing she felt for what had been, our conversation began to touch on the topics of trust and hope. During our chat, I offered up the following thought:

 

Just remember that hope is free, and that what you are trusting in is the future sorting itself out in a way you can't even imagine now

 

 

As I wrote about the terror that will, and has, surrounded my attempts at forging a new path for my life, that thought came back to me yesterday. There is every reason to hope that my hard work and my efforts will bear fruit some day. I mean, why not? People DO get what they hope for at times. Steph, for instance, got a screenwriting sale she'd been hoping for at the very last possible moment before she was about to start living on the streets.

 

And, I feel even more importantly, I am more ready than ever to trust that my future will sort itself out in a way I can't even imagine now. Yes, I'm trying to work on a plan...my "Gap Year" plan...but I'm pretty convinced that all that will be is the basis for the changes the Universe will make to my plan. A template that I'll be able to look back on and say "well, it certainly didn't turn out the way I expected"

 

And then smile :)

 

You can see Steph's artistic stylings here and on Instagram as move_like_magic