Have you ever been driven by the need to know?

I remember the days right after I met the man whom I’ve now been married to for almost twenty-four years.

The retreat was held about four hours from where I lived at the time, and we discovered that we lived only one-half hour from each other.

After I got home, I was overcome by the need to know if he was going to call or not. Frankly, it made me miserable. And he didn’t call right away–I think it took about ten days. Ten days of a kind of misery, obsessing and not sleeping much. This was a kind of ecstatic misery, but misery nonetheless. Wild scenarios flooded my mind–what I might have said or done that would have put him off, how I might have been more attractive to him. I have to chuckle now, because I was in quite a state.

Recently, we placed an offer on a home–in the exact neighborhood where we want to live. I couldn’t help but notice the difference: when the mind got busy, I shifted attention to notice what it was that was wondering–a far more fruitful, and less stressful way to sit in the unknown. We didn’t get the home, but I didn’t suffer in the interim–instead, I spent the time resting in curiosity.

© Amrita Skye Blaine, 2013
photo credit: Charles Barsotti