The Curiosity Reframe

What if...?

I am too anxious to write much this day. Or at least, I feel as if I am too little butter spread over too much toast. There are too many things to do and not enough in me to do all of them.

Except I bet that if I were to get curious about all the things I need to do, I would find that there are fewer things to do than my anxious brain imagines there are. What’s more, I would likely find that not all of them need to be done exactly today at this exact minute, unlike my brain’s tendency to now-ify everything on my mental list.

Getting curious is a reframe, another way of expressing doubt as something that might possibly help and propel instead of something impairing.

It’s my offering to you today: how can you ask questions about what feels like doubt?

What sorts of curiosities can propel you forward, rather than gluing you to your seat in fear?

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My anxiety shows up in my elbows. There’s a tightness there that I can’t seem to escape. I wonder if I can release the tension by drawing large circles with my wrists, rotating my elbows in an ellipse that is irregular at best, but nevertheless seems to do what I want. My feet tip tap beneath me in this library chair and I wonder if stilling them would help, or if adopting a steady rhythm would serve me better. I let the music in my ears dictate the pattern and Lucy Dacus’ voice croons me into slow stillness as my feet first jive along energetically and then slow.

My teeth are full of tension and my belly is a hungry, nervous wreck, but i am still here, writing my way through, and I ask myself, with curiosity, if I keep writing, will something change?

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A few days ago I started a free-write (that I ended up not publishing) admitting that I want these musings and missives to do something. To generate thought and conversation. A mentor of mine recently told me that she brought up the Food and Faith series she attended virtually in casual conversation with some college students, because she was still so interested by the conversation we had at Food and Faith. It’s admissions like these, like a dear friend of mine telling me they have benefitted from the spiritual care I offered, that remind me that maybe this is a calling after all. To write and think and speak and offer care throughout all of it—maybe this is the distillation of my call. What makes care worthwhile? Is it not the ways in which the care is felt by both giver and receiver? Or is it the fact of care itself, freely offered, freely received? I confess I am not sure. But I am curious. And maybe that is enough.

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