Choosing the Birkenstock is hard.
As I was watching the Barbie movie, I recognised that moment. Of wanting to go back to what is known, preferring not to move forward. For Barbie, it was a choice between pretty heels and flat Birkenstocks.
(It made me giggle, as I had to give up heels in 2007 due to an injury. And over the last few years, I’ve become a Birkenstock devotee.)
But the choice Barbie faced was about more than shoes.
She could return to the familiar world she knew, where everything seemed perfect, or step into an unfamiliar reality where things were messy, painful and uncertain.
And I think that’s a choice many of us face when life changes in ways we didn’t expect.
For those of us with chronic illness, that choice can be particularly difficult.
We often spend years trying to get back to the life we had before. The one where we could work, be productive, make plans and do the things we loved without having to think about pain, fatigue or physical limitations.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to recover, or pursuing treatments that might help us feel better.
But sometimes healing also asks something different of us.
It asks us to accept the reality we’re living in, rather than continually trying to return to the one we’ve lost.
And that can be terrifying.
Because it means journeying away from everything we’ve known, without any certainty about what comes next.
Crossing the threshold
When life shocks us, we have to make a choice.
For Barbie, it was flat feet and cellulite. For the rest of us, it might be crisis, loss, divorce, death, illness, betrayal, injury, or any painful change that rattles the foundations of our world.
None of us particularly wants to cross that threshold.
We want life to go back to the painless paradise we remember. The one where we didn’t know about the problems we had. Where we were asleep to the issues that existed.
But the pain doesn’t simply disappear because we wish it would.
And eventually, we may begin to recognise that something needs to change.
In stories, crossing the threshold is often represented by moving to a new location.
Dorothy is delivered to Oz. Alice falls down the rabbit hole. Barbie drives into the human realm.
They leave behind the world they understand and find themselves somewhere unfamiliar, where the old rules no longer apply.
But there’s a difference between being thrown into a new reality and consciously choosing to engage with it.
We can experience enormous upheaval and still spend years trying to return to how things were.
We can resist the changes that have already happened, or wait for someone to tell us what to do.
Sometimes we’re fortunate enough to have mentors who encourage us, who help us see that another way of living might be possible.
But ultimately, we all cross the threshold alone.
No one else can make that choice for us.
And I’ve been wondering about what gives us the courage to do it.
Because sometimes, I think we cross the threshold with the help of self-deceit.
And sometimes, we cross with self-belief.
When self-deceit helps us move forward
Years ago, when I was wrecked with illness and pain, living in an unfamiliar country without friends or family, I decided I had to go forward.
I had to engage with the pain and find a different way of living.
But I wasn’t ready to accept the possibility that my pain might never completely disappear.
So I allowed myself to believe that the journey wouldn’t take too long. That I would be free of pain relatively quickly. And that I had the resilience to surmount any challenge that came my way.
Looking back, I can see how much I needed those beliefs.
I needed to believe there was an end in sight, that all the hard work I was doing would eventually lead me back to a life without pain.
And that belief helped me cross the threshold.
It gave me a reason to keep going, to explore unfamiliar approaches and to engage with experiences I would rather have avoided.
But it was also a form of self-deceit.
I was telling myself a story about how things would turn out, even though I couldn’t possibly know.
I believed that if I worked hard enough, learned enough and did all the right things, I could control the outcome.
And for a while, that belief was useful.
It helped me do something I might otherwise have been too frightened to attempt.
But eventually, I had to confront the limitations of that story.
Because despite everything I’d done, I couldn’t guarantee that my pain would disappear.
I couldn’t control how long the journey would take, or what I might have to give up along the way.
And I had to begin accepting that pain was part of my reality, whether I wanted it to be or not.
I’d long understood the distinction between pain and suffering. That pain is an inevitable part of life, while some of our suffering comes from how we respond to it.
But understanding that intellectually didn’t mean I could avoid suffering altogether.
I still experienced fear, grief, frustration and disappointment.
And perhaps that was part of what I needed to learn.
That healing didn’t mean reaching a place where nothing hurt anymore.
It meant becoming more able to live with the reality I was in, even when it wasn’t the reality I’d hoped for.
When self-belief has to be enough
I’ve been thinking about the difference between self-deceit and self-belief.
At first glance, they can look remarkably similar.
Both can give us the confidence to step into the unknown.
Both can help us take action when we’re frightened.
But I think there’s an important distinction.
Self-deceit says: I can do this because I believe things will turn out the way I need them to.
Self-belief says: I can do this even though I don’t know how things will turn out.
One depends on a particular outcome.
The other asks us to trust our capacity to engage with whatever happens.
And that’s a much more uncomfortable kind of trust.
Because we can’t reassure ourselves that everything will work out exactly as we want.
We can’t pretend we know what lies ahead.
We have to accept that we might make mistakes, experience disappointment, or discover that the path we’ve chosen isn’t the one we expected.
And we have to be willing to continue engaging with life anyway.
I’m not suggesting that optimism is inherently self-deceptive, or that we need to imagine every possible thing that could go wrong before making a decision.
But there’s a difference between feeling hopeful about an outcome and needing to believe that outcome is guaranteed before we can move forward.
I think I’ve crossed the threshold from both places.
And the second has asked something rather different of me.
Choosing the Birkenstock again
When I found myself standing on another threshold, I was afraid.
I could feel myself wanting to return to what was familiar, even though I knew something needed to change.
And this time, I couldn’t convince myself that everything would turn out the way I wanted.
I didn’t know what was waiting on the other side.
I didn’t know whether I was making the right decision.
And I couldn’t know what the consequences might be.
Yes, I had my mentor there holding my hand, but she couldn’t jump with me.
Only I could make the decision to go.
To accept the consequences I couldn’t control or predict.
I was afraid but I jumped.
I am still afraid.
Afraid that I’m going in the wrong direction. Afraid that I can’t control everything. Afraid that I’m turning away people I could help.
I don’t know what’s next.
I don’t know whether I’m on the wrong path.
I know I’m uncomfortable, and worrying thoughts constantly arise.
I know I keep asking people for advice and direction, to tell me what to do.
But they can’t.
No one can.
And perhaps that’s what choosing the Birkenstock really means.
Not that we’ve suddenly become brave, or that we feel certain about where we’re going.
Not that we’ve stopped wanting the comfort of our old lives.
But that we’re willing to engage with the reality in front of us, rather than needing to know how the story ends before we begin.
I can only engage in the process, stay open to what needs to be healed and to what the universe presents me with.
I am here now.