It’s eleven at night, and I just turned on my “blogging music.” This morning started off slowly–I slept in, ate breakfast, then read over a hundred fifty pages in The Cry for Myth by Rollo May. It’s fabulous, about the idea that life is inherently anxiety-inducing and that myths help us not only make sense of our world, but also alleviate that anxiety. Too much anxiety in your life? You need a different myth, a different viewpoint, a different psychological construct from which to see things.

A different set of glasses.

Honestly, I could have spent the entire day reading. I can’t tell you what a sense of accomplishment and joy I get when I finish an entire book in one day. Alas, this was not to be. For weeks I’ve been telling myself that I’d put down my books and finally do a few things–respond to emails, go to the bank and the post office, shit like that. Well, I finally did these things this afternoon. And whereas I started to give myself a hard time for not doing them sooner, I didn’t because recently I’ve been thinking about divine timing.

I’ll explain.

Byron Katie says that when you argue with reality, you lose–but only one hundred percent of the time. This means that if you think you SHOULD be running errands (and you aren’t) or that you SHOULD HAVE run errands sooner than you did, you’re going to experience stress. Why? Just one simple reason–it’s not the truth. The truth is you’re not running errands, or that you didn’t run them sooner than you did. This is what I mean by divine timing. Things happen when they happen. We can SHOULD and SHOULD HAVE all day long, but that just produces anxiety. This is the myth of I’m not doing things right, the myth of I did something wrong, and the myth of I’m a bad person, I’m a worm.

Going back to divine timing, I can’t tell you the number of times things have shown up in my life at just the right moment. For example, not too long ago I got an unexpected check for nearly three hundred dollars in the mail, the result of one of those silly class-action lawsuit postcards that I fill out now and then (and usually result in a check for $2.87). Well, that three hundred bucks totally saved my ass. The same thing happened over Christmas this last year when I needed to pay some bills but couldn’t work because of my knee injury. Someone bought a gift certificate for dance lessons. Of course, this miraculous timing doesn’t just apply to money. My therapist showed up at just the right time. Books and information continue to show up at just the right time.

One of my points here is–How do you know? That is, how do you know you should have said something or done something sooner–or that you should even do it at all (if you haven’t already)? Having been on the receiving end of multiple (hundreds of) perfectly timed kindnesses, it’s not a stretch for me to think that I can play a part in the producing end of perfectly timed kindnesses in someone else’s life. What I mean is that I can beat myself up for not sending a letter in the mail sooner, but maybe the person getting that letter didn’t NEED it sooner. Maybe they needed it LATER. Likewise, I can (and do) beat myself up for not working more on writing my book(s), but again, perhaps it’s just not time. How will I know it’s time to write my book(s)?

I’ll have my butt in a chair and will be writing them.

It’s that simple.

Gosh, we like to complicate things. I like to complicate things. And not that I’m encouraging procrastination or not listening to your inner nudges to act, but I am suggesting that most of our self-flagellation is just that–self-punishment. As if we won’t get things done unless we constantly berate ourselves. I’m not doing things right. I did something wrong. I’m a bad person, I’m a worm. Please, we need a new myth–the myth of I’m doing things just fine, the myth of I did something right (a lot of things right), the myth of I’m a good person, not a worm.

Living by a new myth, of course, is more than simply changing your perspective or putting on a new pair of glasses. For a myth to really make a difference in your life, you have to internalize it and you have to let it change you. May says, “We seem to think that we can be reborn without ever dying.” This means that our old personality structure must be completely torn up (or torn down) in order for a new one to be planted, take root, and grow. This is why Noah was in the Ark, Jonah was in the whale, and Christ was in the grave. Chaos always precedes order, darkness always precedes light, and death always precedes new life–and change always takes time. For me, this is where the myths are most helpful. Knowing that “destruction comes before creation,” rather than be filled with anxiety whenever my life is falling apart, I can be filled with hope. I think, It’s just a matter of time before things start coming together.