My deepest struggle was the need to be perfect.
Don’t be alarmed!
Well, I certainly was alarmed when I saw this flashing van in my driveway the other night, here in Costa Rica.
There are a few other people that live on the property I live on (used to be an old BnB) and instinctively I knew that I wasn’t hurt!
My immediate thought was: ‘What happened’? Obvious immediate thought, right!? Phew, glad I wasn’t the only one – I’ve been accused of overreacting in the past!
So, what happened, you ask? Well here in Costa Rica you can buy private health insurance and the cost is so little compared to back home for extended health benefit insurance.
So, I rush down the stairs from my place to the driveway like the house is on fire –
¿qué pasó? ¿qué pasó? What happened?!
The driver just looks at me while two women come out of the truck – a Dr. and a nurse!
Now my head is spinning as I say, ‘What happened?!’ 3 more times, panic increasing.
The owner of the property lives here part time with a few family members and says: “Oh it’s just a regular Dr.’s appointment. Nothing is wrong at all, they make house calls, but I didn’t think they would bring the whole paramedic van!’
A Dr.’s appt? All that for an appt? I get the house call thing (well actually I don’t except for once in the 60’s when I had Mono as a kid). Talking about being prepared!
Moral of the story (and almost everything we think of is some kind of story or another) – that what we see in front of us is not necessarily the truth.
That we perceive things as we think they may be, based on past experiences or what our brains are perceiving them to be (aka making up a story), which is also what we need them to be, so that we can understand and make sense of something.
Why I say ‘we need them to be’ – because that perception is usually in alignment with how we think day to day. My non-alarmist friends would be curious, where my go-to-alarmist brain goes first is ‘OMG something tragic is happening’.
I equate flashing ambulance lights as ‘something must be wrong’. Yes, it would make sense logically for me to think so, and it activated all my senses and a fear response. Most stories do activate the fear response, and then we live inside of a story that is housed in a fear bubble (kinda like the Truman show). I could take for days on this subject, but the bottom line is….
… I made up a story in my head, in a nano second, that was in fact, 100% wrong.
