The other night, I was having a conversation with my husband. I was acutely aware that there was something present that was quite sticky for me… a narrative that had been droning in the background of my mind. The story was about my son. He’s at a new school and hasn’t made any friends yet. And my mind just kept fixating on it!
Here’s the thing: my son has shown no difficulty with this. He hasn’t said it’s a problem. Nothing in his demeanor suggests that he’s struggling or sad. No teacher or staff member has reached out to me to suggest he's having any trouble. He’s an only child, perfectly content to be by himself, and has been navigating this new school just fine. He’s his same jolly self. He likes school!
But, the Mom-Worry story was there. Creeping in. Persistent. And when allowed the space to be expressed, it was almost like a little demon stretching its limbs. To be clear, I did not believe this story. I knew it didn't reflect reality, even a little bit. But it was allowed space to be shared simply because it existed. The little demon needed air; it was welcomed.
And then, mid-monologue, an image appeared in my mind.
A potato.
Not just any potato.
A potato that had rolled out of the bag and settled in a dark corner of the pantry, untouched, sitting there long enough to sprout eyes. Doing its potato thing. Using its energy, even in dark conditions, to grow.
And in that moment, I saw it clearly. My sticky, worried, unfounded narrative was exactly like that potato. Energy moving in the dark, sprouting eyes, growing in ways that were fertile but not necessarily helpful (or delicious).
I saw clearly that there’s really no difference between me and a forgotten potato. The energy that grows eyes on it in the dark corner of the pantry is the same energy that moves me to create imagined difficulties in my own mind. Both are just expressions of life moving. Both sprout. One manifests in a vegetable form; the other as a thought-feeling experience appearing as a story that exists only in my mind.
This is the realization that contributed to the end of my ranting (and the end of the story showing up at all):
None of it means anything.
At all.
The Mom-Worry story doesn’t mean anything about me. It doesn’t mean anything about my son. It doesn’t reflect the present, the past, or the future. It’s simply energy doing what energy does; expressing itself in a particular form at a particular time. Just like a potato, it’s completely impersonal. Even when the flavor of the content seems nothing but personal!
So, here’s an invitation to you:
The next time you hear yourself wrapped up in a story that feels really heavy and important, see if you can take a tiny step back as you let the little demon loose. See if you can simply bear witness to the story, watch it sprout, and let it be what it is.
Maybe your story will turn out to be nothing but an old potato, too.