05 | I can't prove it, but that's not the point.

A delusional step-child, my new job, and beautiful made-up things.

Here’s a question: Do you believe in divine timing?

…

No pressure to answer! Honestly, I needed someone to ask me that question, and gosh-darn-it, sometimes if you need something done, you gotta do it yourself!

I think my answer is "yes," but that’s not the point. The real issue here is a semantic one.

Wait, what? I urge you: please hang in there. Let me tell you a couple stories. The first one is about a delusional step-child…

There I was: a shy high school freshman in a Spanish III class full of juniors.

I went to this artsy-ish high school you had to test into. Kids went there for the electives: TV production with big fancy cameras; art classes that leaned heavily into Adobe Creative Suite (back when making even bad digital art took actual work).

Meanwhile, my favorite subject was Spanish¹. I thought it was fun and practical. But speaking to my class full of juniors in English felt scary, so I mostly tried to blend into the background.

Anyway, one thing I loved about Spanish was that consuming entertainment counted as learning. And sometimes, in that Spanish III class, the teacher would just pop in a Spanish language movie.

On one particular day, we'd just finished watching El Laberinto Del Fauna, a Guillermo Del Toro movie you might know by its English title, Pan's Labyrinth.

El Laberinto Del Fauna features some low-key creepy fairies, a really creepy (titular) faun, and a really really creepy flesh-eating villain whose eyes are on his palms...

But the star is a little girl named Ofelia, who falls into the fantastical netherworld inhabited by all these beings and finds that there, she is a long-lost princess.

I would like you to know that I could’ve chosen SO MANY creepy stills from this movie and I didn’t, I chose this one, because I respect you.

In the real world, things are tough for Ofelia: her mother has recently been impregnated by this asshole who also happens to be a Francoist general in the Spanish Civil War, and so Ofelia is carted away to his army camp and basically ignored while her mom waits to give birth or whatever.

In the end, I think, Ofelia dies? Like, she's shot by her evil stepdad? Or maybe she doesn't die, she ascends into her role as long-lost princess? Question mark? I haven't seen the movie in a while and I think this is more fun if I don't read the whole Wikipedia page.

You get the idea. The ending is ambiguous. So you probably can see why, after turning the lights back on in the classroom, the first thing my teacher said was:

"Raise your hand if you think it [the faun, the fantastical world, the creepy fairies, etc] was all in Ofelia's head."

19-ish juniors raised their hands.

Then the teacher said:

"Raise your hand if you think it was all REAL."

I said to myself, self, do you really need to be That Girl right now? And then I raised my hand.

All eyes on me.

"Well..." I said "If it was real for her, I don't really think it matters if it was actually real, you know?"

Blank stares alllll around. It was as if everyone was seeing me for the first time and didn’t know what to make of me.

We moved on.

The end.

Here I am: a grown-ass woman who still doesn’t think it really matters.

Do you get it yet? What this has to do with divine timing?

Ok, hang on, I haven't finished.

This isn't just about divine timing. It's also about manifestation and "the universe has my back" and the placebo effect and a bunch of other stuff.

But I’ve been thinking about divine timing because I recently got a new job offer. And it came at the perfect time.

For the past 10 months, I've been working at a restaurant. I love my coworkers to death, but I'm burning out on the work itself. It turns out service work requires a deep well of patience, humor, caring, and energy to be sprinkled lovingly onto hundreds of strangers, and I’ve found myself coming up dry.

But leaving something like a job — like a community — proved to be hard.

Then, one day, a new job offer landed in my inbox. Because a few months prior I’d had a conversation with a dear friend which led to a networking meetup with a stranger who I just so happened to be aligned with and who just so happened to have a coworker who was retiring soon...

Then, like, the next week, I hit the Burnout Wall at the restaurant, which became clear when some lady being annoying about pasta sent me into an emotional spiral that shocked even me...

Then, like, the week after that, I had an interview for New Job. And pretty quickly I got an offer. And here I am.

All this to say: it seems like divine timing.

Any earlier, I wouldn't have been ready to leave my coworkers and ditch the service industry for a desk job.

Any later... who knows? I've been hitting against the Burnout Wall again and again like a fly trapped behind a window. I don't think I could get through another summer working at a restaurant in a tourist town without turning into some kinda zombie.²

Does this prove that "divine timing" is a thing?

My answer is: who cares? Right now, it feels real to ME. I feel grateful for a lot of people and excited for a lot of things.

And that's all that matters.

Listen, y'all. The human brain is a delusion machine.

We know this because of Science.

We don't live in reality, we live in a construction of reality built from how our brain processes the information our senses collect.

Everyone's construction — everyone's delusion — is a little different.

Our³ instinct is to try to lock down what's real and what's possible and what's the objective answer. To pin it to a board with absolute certainty so we can look at it daily and feel like we know, so we are safe.

While forging toward certainty is helpful in scientific research and engineering, it's RARELY a useful way to approach the hard problems of how to be human because guess what, there's no definitive answer to those hard problems.

A more useful line of questioning is:

What kind of delusions are helpful, and which are harmful?

What kind of delusion do you want to live in?

What kind of delusion do you want your society to be steeped in?

I’ve known people, like Ofelia, who died happy despite being downtrodden and powerless because they found a framework in which they mattered and had control.

I know people who wallow in years-long problems and can give you a half-hour-long speech about how it's impossible to solve those problems.

I know people who can ask for a sign, and they see one, and they are overwhelmed with joy, and they are so kind to everyone around them.

Aaaand I know people who can ask for a sign, and they see one, and they are overwhelmed by self-importance, and they feel validated in being a dick to people.

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I think there's this idea infused in society that if the lens through which you see the world isn’t rigid and certain, you must be living a dark, scary existence.

That if you're not willing to die on any particular hill screaming "THIS FRAMEWORK OF REALITY IS THE REALEST!" you're somehow missing out on the best parts of the human experience.

I can't always tell you what I believe. And I'm certainly not going to sit here and insist that people who live in a rigidly defined reality aren't happy.

But I can tell you that I’m happy here, in my subjective, ever-changing little version of reality.

Because if the good things I see are real for me, maybe it doesn't matter if they’re actually real, you know?

1. Don't ask me to speak Spanish to you now. I haven't practiced in like 9 years.

2. If you have the privilege of interacting with a highly professional front-of-house person at a restaurant -- a server or bartender who clearly has YEARS of experience -- PLEASE REMEMBER that they are a very special and skilled type of person who deserves so much respect.

3. I'm not saying "our" as a softened proxy for "YOU ALL" btw. Because I DO THIS TOO, ALL THE TIME.