Today I made a phone call that I'd been putting off for a while: since last November in fact. I had built up a complicated lump of mental machinery around and about it. It had become representative of a whole side of my life, a symbol of whether or not I am able, when needed, to take the plunge into the unknown. I must have played the conversation a hundred times in my head. I had thought about what it would be like after I had made the call, how I would feel, what the next step might be like. Part of me knew I would make the call, the other half knew that I wouldn't. It really wasn't a momentous call; but I had made it that. Suddenly, today after my usual mental hamster-wheel had spun a while, the knot of stuff kind of dropped lower. I almost made a decision to let my gut do the leading. Before I knew it, I was on the phone. I got through to a different person to that whom I expected. She put me through to an answer phone where I left a shaky-sounding message. But I had done it.
I don't like to say that "zen does this" and "zen does that." Zen doesn't do anything. But that superhero power of "not do anything" sometimes comes in damned handy, especially for a Zen worrier like me. I'm far too much stuck in my ridiculous noggin, and things never turn out how they look from in there, in my experience. But it's so easy to get bogged down in mind-mud. I don't despise the worrying or the fretting. They are part of life, they represent the impetus, the itch to grow and to seek change. But it's nice to let the dust settle sometimes.
Go on, make that call, whatever it is.
