How ‘Everything Becomes Okay In The End’

“Don’t worry… In the end, everything will be okay”- words of consolation that are so easy to trust when we’re on the brink of taking the next big step in life – taking an academic or career decision, moving to another city, choosing between work and relationships or making a choice to marry or not.

To the outside world, we seem as confident as we’ve always been. Little do they know that we’ve camouflaged a huge pile of questions, anxieties and insecurities under a bright smile. And amidst the back and forth of our uncertain mind, we’re struggling to keep the smile on our face, struggling to figure out if what we’re about to do is right for us! Life-changing decisions can put even the best of us in self-doubt. Sometimes, we just don’t know what we want for ourselves and we just can’t seem to have clarity of thought!

Friends say, ‘Hang in there, give it some time’. Parents come in with the all too familiar, ‘When I was your age…’ story, the conclusion of which often is – ‘…with time, everything falls into place.’ And those who know about the chaos inside you seldom say anything apart from, ‘In the end, whatever will happen, will happen for the better’ or ‘Life has a reason behind everything’ and so on. By now, you almost want to believe that ‘Life’ and ‘Time’ are these wise old beings with a plan for you who will make everything alright ‘in the end’. But when I need to, can I meet, hug, talk to, or crack a joke on ‘Life’? Apparently not but beware, ‘Life can play a cruel joke on you’ because, haven’t you heard, ‘Life is unfair’?

So let’s say, Life and Time had no regard for what we do with ourselves and in fact, the only thing they did was pass by with one another. And maybe, why ‘everything becomes okay in the end!’ is because we, intentionally or unintentionally, make a choice to be okay with the way things are. At some point, we fully embrace the consequences that came along with our decision and the ‘in the end’ that everyone refers to, is simply the moment when you finally make your peace with the move you made. And that is actually how eventually ‘things fall into place’.
None of this might sound insightful to you and that’s a good thing! But my point here is, when we’re all aware that our lives are nothing but a sum of our choices, why don’t we say it the way it is? When we’re giving advice, to others or ourselves, why don’t we complete our sentences like, ‘Things will get better – only if I choose to deal with them in a better way’ or, ‘Everything will settle down – only if I choose to settle down with everything and having said that, I can also choose not to settle at all’? Is it because completing those statements gives us more control over our lives than we want to have and gives our choices more power than we can handle? Is that why we, as a society, find marvellously intelligent ways to avert being solely responsible for our lives by ‘leaving the rest up to God’ or ‘letting Life take its own course’ or then simply telling ourselves, “It’ll all be okay”, instead of, “I’m not okay. I can be okay if I choose to. So what do I want to choose and am I ready to make that choice?” Is it because we don’t have the answer to that?

 

In a time of abundant options and overwhelming information, maybe we’ve gotten too used to google-ing the answers to all our questions. ‘When in doubt, say no’ (because the feeling of doubt is a warning sign from within), has now become ‘when in doubt, Google’. And with that proverbial change, we’ve shifted to an almost mechanical way of decision-making:

First, find out what are the million options you have. Second, find out every single detail you possibly can about each option. Next, use the data you have to logically predict the consequences of each option. Then, very practically, list out the pros and cons of each consequence. Compare results. Choose.

Nothing wrong with that if you’re wondering which phone to buy next or comparing universities. But when it comes to the decisions that really matter, do we often find ourselves lost because there doesn’t seem to be a search box that will give us ‘relevant results’ for the actual questions that trouble us, questions that put us on the spot like, ‘What do I really want for myself? How do I want to lead my life?’ And if we’re struggling to find the answers to those questions, then I wonder if, amidst this age of Know-It-All, we’ve lost the ability to go the good old Listen-To-Your-Instinct way.

Think about it. That inner voice in us that is drowning in all the information and data analysis of the mind, is it as loud and clear as it used to be? Is our instinctive sense as strong as it was and if so, do we rely on it as much anymore? Or do we sometimes follow Google Maps even if we know the way, just to be sure we don’t go wrong? Just like the brain slows down when kept inactive, have we put our Instinct ‘out of practice’?

In my humble opinion, we may have.

The truth about making a choice is that in spite of all the calculations and predictions, we may never know if we chose well, even after we have chosen. Choices are ultimately a Leap of Faith – Faith in oneself – not in Life, Time, God or Google.

Maybe, taking that leap is what causes anxiety – the anxiety that ‘I must know the exact consequences of every option before I make my choice and because I’m unable to have that information before-hand I am unable to make an informed decision about my life and so I don’t trust myself enough to choose what is best for me. I therefore am scared to be the lone deciding factor of my life’s decisions and I feel I should google more/pray more/talk to more people and see how it goes.’ In fact, for many of us, the next step is to unknowingly throw ourselves into a safe place called, ‘Confusion’ – a state when we are sometimes unable to make a choice and many a times, unwilling to make one.

But when we’re confused because we don’t know what the future holds, it’s time to remember the good news: We’ve never known. Yet, we’ve made our choices so far! Maybe what’s different this time is that we aren’t depending on ourselves as much – on our memory, our judgements and even our gut feelings.

Focus. Focus on what you feel, before you turn anywhere else for guidance, because you are the origin and source of all the knowledge you need to make that ‘well-informed’ decision.

Listen to what your instinct is telling you, be honest to yourself about what you hear and most importantly, Trust. Trust that you know best because nothing or no one else knows better. Put your confusions to rest, face your fears and follow yourself more than you would anyone or anything else.

Because that wise old being, the one who has a reason behind everything, the one who you can fearlessly invest all your faith in and the only one who can make everything okay in the end, is You.