It's Going to be Fine

It is. Really.

If you’ve read any of my other blogs, you know how often I don’t feel like it is, fine, I mean.

So often I walk around with a sense a dread, waiting for the other (or first) shoe to drop (wait, what does that expression even mean?) and feel that my actions affect the course of eternity. A feeling which, as Gandalf told Frodo, is too great a burden for any one person to bear.

But still, it’s easy for me to feel that way. Call it insecurity, call it narcissism, it’s a tendency towards panic whenever anything goes wrong, and the supposition that it’s my responsibility to fix it.

But the reality is, it’s going to be fine. 

Now, I’m not talking about gargantuan debt, life-threatening illnesses, or other “big” concerns—although, greater perspective is always healthy even in these areas too—but someone I’m more okay with some of the big concerns than the fact that I gave the wrong syllabus to a student, that I was late on that assignment, or the fact I’m having a bad hair day. Or forgot to get gas. Or that we’re out of milk and I had to drink dry, black coffee. These little things can rock my world. And sometimes the most powerful truth I can tell myself is that it’s going to be fine.

It’s a message that ran through my head this morning while I taught my classes, and as I spoke to students who were as nervous as I with the beginning of the new semester.  It’s going  to be fine that you couldn’t find your class today; it’s going to be fine that you got the wrong text book; it’s going to be fine that you said that weird thing in class, because if life moves in a healthy way, those things don’t really matter. You’re supposed to make mistakes and learn and look stupid occasionally. It’s part of life. You learn. And it’ll be fine.  If it’s not—and it’s interesting what we often qualify as not being fine—then, well, maybe it’s time to move in a different direction, bring in some help.

But that’s natural, too. We weren’t made to be “fine” on our own anyway.

One last thing. I realized this morning that in our hyper-achieving culture, I often think that “fine” isn’t enough—that I should be great! fantastic! excellent! at all times and with exclamation points. Never mind that that mentality can be exhausting; never mind that sometimes that’s not how life goes. Not that we don’t love and work for the highs, but if life is always a high, well, then you just created a new norm, and what’s after that?

Anyway, all this to say that life isn’t always a string of highs, greats, and fantastic, sometimes it’s okay to be just fine, sufficient, and enough.  And sometimes enough is all you need.