Recently a friend told me that planning trips makes him so nervous, because of the upcoming dislocation and the need to make so many choices, that he tends to avoid the planning.

He also mentioned that he hoped to one day adopt an approach he had heard from me: since we can't predict how things will unfold, we can take a bit of the pressure off ourselves by acknowledging that we can't possibly know ahead of time what the "right choice" might be, and reassuring ourselves that "it can be good either way!" He added, "If I can ever actually acquire that as my default mode for thinking, I will have progressed significantly in my spiritual growth."

So I told him I still get nervous getting ready for a trip. And I shared with him about another good friend, a long-practicing Zen Buddhist, who likewise gets very anxious about trips. One day she went to visit the Roshi at her Zen Center to ask him how to be calmer about it. "Oh, me too!" he said. The Roshi too gets highly anxious when getting ready to go on a trip.

One of the reasons for this, the Roshi thinks, is that "even though in Buddhist practice, we seek to remember each day that we live moment by moment, not knowing what will happen next, taking a trip makes us extra aware of this truth, and so, we get nervous. This is part of our being human," he said. "It's another opportunity to expand our compassion for ourselves.... and everyone else."

So, it seems we are in good company as we notice our nervousness and respond with compassion. "It can be good either way!" as a default mode of thinking is quite a stretch for us all.