Nothing Is Going Right… But How the Hell Do You Know?

love always

Sep 28

6 min read

Updated: Oct 4

By QueenB.Divine

Notice this. Every single day we make judgment calls. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. My mother was a very biblical woman, and she used to say something along the lines of, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” I’m probably not quoting it perfectly because I’m not here pretending I suddenly became a biblical scholar before breakfast, but I understood what she meant: be careful about judging people because you don’t know the whole story. Funny thing is, we rarely apply that same wisdom to our own lives. We judge the hell out of them. One bad morning, one bill, one argument, one rejection, one missed flight and suddenly we’ve reached a verdict: Nothing is going right.

Think about how big that sentence is. Nothing? Not one damn thing? The sun came up. You’re breathing. Maybe the coffee maker still works. Yet somehow at 9:17 in the morning we have conducted a full investigation, called all the witnesses and sentenced the entire day to failure. Nothing is going right. I know that sentence because I’ve said it more times than I could count. There were periods of my life when I didn’t just think nothing was going right—I thought my entire life was a mistake.

My life started rolling downhill pretty early, and that ball didn't exactly get lighter as it went. It picked up dirt, moss, rocks and probably a few emotional shopping carts along the way. I ran away from home when I was around eleven. I ended up in group homes. I saw things. I experienced things. Then I entered my twenties thinking adulthood might finally straighten everything out, only to discover adulthood had apparently misplaced the instruction manual too. There were times I faced eviction. Times I was hungry. Times there wasn't anybody to call. Times I couldn't understand what was happening with my health and couldn't seem to get answers. So when I said, “Nothing is going right,” I wasn't sitting somewhere complaining because my latte had the wrong milk in it. Some things genuinely felt horrible.

But not too long ago, I heard myself thinking that old sentence again: Nothing is going right. And something inside me answered, very simply, “But how do you know?” Well, excuse me. Apparently my own mind had decided to challenge me before I'd even finished complaining. But the question stopped me. How do I know? I know what something feels like right now. I know what I wanted to happen. I know what didn't happen according to my plan. But how could I possibly know the final meaning of something while I'm still standing in the middle of it?

That's where the word right gets interesting. Right according to whom? Right according to the version of me standing here today with about twelve percent of the information? We look at something that didn't work and immediately call it wrong. The relationship ended: wrong. The job disappeared: wrong. The flight was missed: wrong. The plan fell apart: definitely wrong. But sometimes something can feel completely wrong while it's happening and turn out to be the exact interruption that moved your life somewhere else.

I'm not saying horrible things are secretly wonderful. I'm not interested in putting glitter on suffering and calling it spiritual growth. Losing your home hurts. Being hungry hurts. Being sick and not knowing why is frightening. Losing someone hurts. Having your plans collapse can scare the crap out of you. Pain is pain. What I'm questioning is our ability to know, while we're standing inside that pain, what the entire story is going to mean.

Sometimes we're so desperate to fix what we believe is going wrong that we start interfering with something that may simply need time. We push. We shove. We call. We text again. We send another email. We refresh the page seventeen times as though the eighteenth refresh is when the universe finally says, “Oh! Cheri checked again. Everybody move!” We have become incredibly accustomed to believing that if something isn't moving, we need to make it move.

Maybe not.

Sometimes life might be saying, “You have absolutely no idea what you're doing right now, so could you kindly move your hands?” And I swear, I think some of us hear that message and respond by grabbing a bigger wrench.

Nature doesn't seem to have this problem. Think about a forest. Seeds fall everywhere. Some land in places that look ridiculous. Nobody comes running out with a clipboard screaming, “This seed is three centimetres outside the approved growth zone!” Things fall, break down, take root, compete, cooperate and eventually create this enormous living infrastructure. If you photographed the process at the wrong moment, it might look like a complete mess. Come back later and you're standing in a forest.

Maybe there are times in our own lives when we're looking at scattered seeds and calling them failure because we haven't lived long enough to see the trees.

I've learned that when something is genuinely outside my control, I have to be careful about declaring what it means. Missed flight? I don't know yet. Something didn't work out? I don't know yet. Someone left? I know it hurts, but I still don't know the entire story. That doesn't mean sitting on the couch forever waiting for magical forces to pay the electricity bill. There are things we absolutely need to act on. But there's a difference between taking the next sensible step and trying to wrestle reality to the floor because it isn't following your schedule.

Sometimes self-care is action. Sometimes self-care is restraint.

Sometimes it's saying, “I have done what I can do today. I'm going to leave this damn thing alone for a minute.”

That's why journaling can be so interesting. Write down the moments when you're convinced everything is going wrong. Don't make the journal pretty. Don't worry about handwriting. Write the ugly stuff. This is a disaster. I hate this. I don't understand this. Why is this happening? Then come back six months later. A year later. Five years later. You might discover that some of the things you begged life not to change are the very things you're grateful didn't stay the same.

I've started thinking about healing this way too. Breaking an arm hurts, but healing an arm can hurt too. Pain doesn't always tell you which direction you're travelling. Sometimes destruction hurts. Sometimes reconstruction hurts. If all you're measuring is discomfort, you can mistake healing for another injury.

That thought changed something for me.

There were years when I looked at my life and thought somebody out there must seriously dislike me. I couldn't understand why so much seemed to keep happening. Now I can look backward and see pieces connecting that I couldn't possibly see while I was living them. I wouldn't choose every experience again. Absolutely not. Some chapters can stay permanently closed, thank you very much. But I can see that my life wasn't necessarily refusing to go right. Sometimes it was trying to become something different from what I thought “right” was supposed to look like.

And that's where the what ifs become interesting. We're usually taught that “what if” thinking creates anxiety. It certainly can. What if everything falls apart? What if I fail? What if nobody comes? But what if we turned it around? What if that relationship had continued? What if you had gotten that job? What if you hadn't missed that flight? What if that rejection hadn't redirected you? What if the thing you once called the worst timing imaginable actually changed your timing?

Maybe what if can also be a place to find gratitude.

So the next time you hear yourself saying, “Nothing is going right,” don't shame yourself for thinking it. I've said it. Sometimes life looks like somebody put all the pieces in a blender and pressed HIGH. But add one question before you hand down the final verdict:

How do I know?

Maybe nothing is going according to your plan. That's different.

Maybe you don't have enough information yet.

Maybe something needs your action.

Maybe something needs your patience.

Maybe something needs to end.

Maybe something needs to heal.

And maybe—just maybe—you need to stop standing over the seed yelling, “WHY AREN'T YOU A TREE YET?”

Take the next step you can take. Handle what is actually yours to handle. Then give the rest a little room to breathe. You don't have to call everything good. You don't have to pretend something doesn't hurt. You just don't have to decide that one painful chapter is proof that the whole damn book went wrong.

I've made that judgment enough times in my own life to know I wasn't always a very reliable judge.

Sometimes everything looks like it's falling apart because something is falling apart. But sometimes things are rearranging, healing, ending, beginning or simply becoming visible—and we're judging the construction site before the building is finished.

So today, if nothing seems to be going right, take care of what you can. Take a breath. Step aside where you need to. Keep moving without trying to force every outcome.

And maybe save your verdict until you've seen a little more of the evidence.

The cure is conversation. Self-love and self-care will get you there.

— QueenB.Divine

https://youtu.be/Wv6JlsOWlGI

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