Dear John,

I made myself the perfect cup of Victoria Grey tea with local honey and frothed oat milk. I toasted a multi-grain English muffin and slathered it with pumpkin seed butter and raspberry jam. I gathered my vitamins in a favorite bowl given to me by someone I love dearly. And I settled into the living room to enjoy breakfast with the goldfinches and bluebirds feasting outside a nearby window.

That’s when I saw a tiny bug crawling up my pant leg.

No! I thought to myself as I slowly stood up from the couch. It can’t be a tick. I was only on the deck for a few minutes!

I walked toward a box of tissues on a nearby table, pulled one from the top, and carefully removed the tick from my pajamas. I went into the bathroom, lifted the toilet lid, and opened the tissue to ensure the tick fell into the bowl. That’s when panic ensued – there was no tick in the tissue.

I went back to the living room and scoured the table and surrounding chairs. No tick. I put on reading glasses and got down on my hands and knees to search the rug below. No luck. I took off all my clothes and threw them into the dryer on high heat, as instructed by my personal life adviser, ChatGPT. Then I grabbed the vacuum, attached the high-powered carpet head, and sucked up everything remotely close to where the tick may have fallen.

As someone who contracted a tick-borne illness a few years ago that required a month-long course of antibiotics, I have great compassion for the part of me that panicked and swung into action. But the shift from a peaceful Sunday morning with the birds to a highly dysregulated flight into fix-it mode was a bit much. I told myself I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the rest of the day with a tick hiding somewhere in the room.

After putting the vacuum cleaner away, I sat down on the sofa and started to laugh. The tick was slightly bigger than a poppy seed – and it suddenly had the power to ruin my day?

I get it. A tick is a scary intruder when you know firsthand the consequences of being bitten. But you know what’s an even scarier intruder? The mind. It tells us things like: If she forgives me, then I’ll feel better. If he gets this job, things will be okay. If they make a diagnosis I can handle, then I’ll be able to relax.

The mind is consequential. It tells us that we’ll have peace when “X” happens (fill in the blank with today’s desire). But this is a lie. Trying to get life to be the way you want it to be – and to stay that way – is just not possible. (Read that last line again.) Just when you think things are finally okay, something always happens to mess up the magic.

This morning, I took a new tick medicine. I did what I could to remedy the situation and then focused all of my attention on the present moment where the tea tasted delicious, the muffin quenched my hunger, and the birds and I had a little visit. I’m learning to let Life handle the rest. She does a much better job anyway. 😉

Love,
Cheryl

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