Note to self: Things generally work out, but about four times more slowly and completely differently than you expect

This is fairly self explanatory, but nonetheless as I started to write this, I twisted myself in knots about whether I really have the right to say that things work out, because maybe that’s naive, and sometimes people you love die young or unexpectedly, and it’s not like you can say life worked out for them. But I don’t want to overthink this: I’m not writing a capital-T Truth here, universal for all people, which needs to be proven out like a geometry theorem. 

I’m just reminding myself that it’ll be okay—good, even. 

I’ve been very fortunate so far in life, so to date, the evidence has shown that ‘things work out’ is a reliable pattern. So stop freaking out, stop worrying, just chill the fuck out. Be patient. Things will work out, although I’ve never accurately predicted how, or when. As a rule, like stated above, the ‘working out’ part most reliably takes a path that no one could have foreseen, and as a result of the windingness of that path, it’s a much longer road than anyone could have guessed. 

And it’s not like there’s an end to the path, a destination where all the problems are neatly resolved simultaneously. We never arrive. But I think that for each individual challenge, there is a resolution, or at least a peace, eventually. Each peace is in discordance with other challenges that rise and fall asynchronously, and at any given time you’re on several paths, all winding around at different speeds towards individual micro-resolutions. This happens because we make things work out, and life is inherently balanced, in constant search for equilibrium. 

When things do resolve, sometimes they do so magically, in such a way that it feels like it can only be the result of a divine intervention, and in these moments it’s easy to see why some people believe in gods or the idea that everything happens for a reason. Because even after terrible things, eventually there is usually peace and even sometimes positive outcomes. And this feels magical because it’s so unexpected and completely unpredictable. 

Sometimes things work out because we just give up and move on, too. I think that’s a unique kind of peace worth keeping in mind, because it’s important to remember that what feels like a problem today may just be something that I don’t give a shit about tomorrow. And in those cases, things still work out, and definitely not like I expected. 

All that said, this whole idea may not, after all, be true. Maybe things don’t all turn out okay and instead we’re individually and collectively doomed. There’s plenty of evidence in the world to make that argument. But I have a choice of what to believe and remind myself of, and life would be pretty miserable if I didn’t believe things will work out just fine.

Not to mention that to truly internalize this belief, I need to have faith in it, more than trust. I think of trust as something evidence-based, and concrete. But trust can be broken. Faith is blind to evidence, and while it can be lost, it’s more often tested, and strengthened with time. 

So like Pascal’s wager, I’ll put my money on the positive because I’d rather live happily and risk being wrong. Not to mention that it’s a self-reinforcing prophecy, and I believe pretty strongly that by assuming this outcome, I’ll help prod it into being. I can’t walk down a path that I don’t believe exists. Yes, I’m telling myself what I want to hear, but that’s also exactly the point.