News from Jules | 08.07.2023 | Both/And
I had been to Arcata, Calif. many times before, so familiar that I could easily navigate the small town streets without Google Maps, but this time felt different. Last Monday, I knew where I was going as far as my favorite coffee shop to write, but after that, who knows where?
While wandering around the farmer’s market that Saturday with one of my best friends, I popped into a favorite tea and crystal shop next to the town square. I picked out a rose quartz stone to add some compassion, healing, peace, and calming energy to my tiny car altar in the coin compartment. From a bowl at the register, I selected an Angel Card that read: Expectancy.
What was I expecting out of this trip?
I wanted to be wild and free.
I wanted to follow my curiosity—to fly by the seat of my yoga pants every day and to rest them somewhere new every night.
But, as I settled into the coffee shop to write last Monday, I felt a sharp pang below my belly button. Hmmm, it wasn’t hunger, I just ate a breakfast sandwich. I hadn’t taken my vitamins yet. Unusual but known, it took me a whole minute to figure out.
It was fear.
A shot of cortisol from my body telling me it couldn’t focus, nonetheless be creative, unless it knew where I was sleeping that night. I frantically spent the next two hours researching campgrounds in the Redwood National Forest and along the Northern California and Oregon coasts, until I had plans or reservations for the whole week. By the time I calmed down, published my post, and was ready to actually hit the road six hours later, there was a parking ticket on my car.
The next night I tried to fall asleep in my tent—miles deep into the Demartin section of the California Coast Trail through Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park and surrounded by thousands of trees, likely several bears given how much berry-filled poop I’d seen on the trail and zero other humans. My thoughts were fixated on cataloging each of my replaceable, but precious belongings in the trunk of my car parked at the trailhead. I wished I had packed that rose quartz stone!
The next day I stopped in a town to get phone service, snacks and gas before setting up camp. As I started up the car to depart, bing bing: my Check Engine Light turned on. You’ve got to be kidding me. By the time I arrived at the campground, I had a splitting headache. I took ibuprofen, heated some soup, chugged water, and crawled into my tent at 7 p.m. The only thought that cut through the halo of pain around my skull was: I can’t do this. I give up.
Sitting back at the same Fred Meyer parking lot the next morning, I called my trusty Volkswagen car mechanic: Yes, my car was driveable, but it needed attention as soon as possible.
Just like my mind. Just like my body. Just like my soul.
Just the other day during a meditation sitting, Joseph Goldstein, one of my favorite teachers on the Ten Percent Happier Meditation App, quoted The Life of Pi a novel by Yann Martel: “To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is to choose immobility as a vehicle for transportation.”
That was it.
I was choosing immobility as my vehicle for transportation.
Not the questioning doubt that sparks curiosity and exploration, but the skeptical doubt that critiques, judges, and distrusts its way into suspended uncertainty.
Critiquing my choices, judging my needs, and distrusting my gut as I compared myself to some ideal of what I thought it looked like to be wild and free—pulling off Highway 101 to watch the sunset before the salty coast air lulled me to sleep in the back of my car. Perfect—and actually free.
And, without a bathroom or a picnic table, or any seating for that matter, or any privacy, or any buffer from the highway noise.
According to a random but wise Internet blogger, expectations are demands we place on ourselves, the outside world, and the people in it. They are our assumptions about life and our idea about what would meet our needs, our vision of what we think must be. Expectations are specific, fearful and attempt to rectify the needs, losses and pain within us. Expectations form disappointment when they inevitably aren’t met.
Whereas, expectancy is a state of readiness, a willingness to receive, a positive orientation that assumes that whatever is coming towards us, we can use it in some way. Expectancy is not attached to what we think should be, but rather embraces whatever is and looks forward to it. Expectancy always forms fulfillment.
When I pulled the Angel Card of Expectancy at the shop in Arcata I didn’t actually know what it meant. I didn’t understand why the little angel drawing was holding an open box with a bow on it. Instead of being curious, I was skeptical. I misunderstood expectancy for expectations.
“See the little angel in the picture?” this blogger pointed out. “She’s opening a present! The PRESENT is the present.”
Somehow, in that moment after I got off the phone with my trusty car mechanic, sighed deeply and accepted that my road trip must now detour through Portland, I finally understood this.
One hundred miles into my trip, I was finally aligning with reality. I drove off to explore the Samuel H. Boardman State Scenic Corridor that day as planned.
Somewhere between stopping at every viewpoint along the 12-mile stretch of gorgeous coastline, hiking down to the natural bridges, meeting a sweet “vanlifer” (and self-taught mechanic!) at the overlook, re-hiking down to the natural bridges to show her the way, then hiking together down to Secret Beach, and chatting the whole way, my Check Engine Light turned off.
She agreed with my Volkswagen mechanic that maybe the gas cap just wasn’t screwed on right, shared a carton of fresh grapes, gave me electrolyte powder packs and exchanged novels. Yes, it’s totally okay to pay $35 a night for a campsite, she encouraged. And yes, it can be scary and thrilling to be on the road alone, she commiserated.
See beautiful photos from my adventures along the Northern California and Oregon coasts on Instagram.
Of course, both/and.
I can be a planner and a free-spirit.
I can feel curious from doubt without being skeptical.
I can be expectant without expectations.
Multiple things can be true at the same time and everybody has a right to their experience, regardless of what somebody else is experiencing, wrote Sarah Epstein Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist (LMFT) in a Psychology Today article.
The trail and road trip are working their magic and presenting their angels. And perhaps the rose quartz stone is working too.
The Check Engine Light has remained off the past four days so my mechanic says it’s okay to leave Oregon and continue up the Washinton coast today. A place I haven’t been before.
Now, I’m really heading into the unknown!
May you dwell in the both/and this week.
Love,
Jules