It took me going to a psychic in 2018 when I was living in NYC to begin to believe, to be able to let myself believe, that everything could be, would be, OK. Great, even. Maybe. Maybe? I wasn’t ready believe that big and openly yet, but then, there, in a small storefront tucked off Bleecker Street and on display for all the Saturday NYU-ish pedestrian traffic, gripping my friend’s hand, the curtain had started to part.
It took me needing someone in a storefront on Sullivan Street with a tarot deck to reflect things back to me like I would be “successful” professionally. Even though, by all traditional markers, I had been up to that point, and also was then. To tell me that “money would never be a problem,” even though—and I feel fortunate—it never has been. (Sadly, this has a broader, gendered context; it’s consistently reported that financial insecurity is higher for women than men, across demographics and time. I think we inherit some generational fear, too; women weren’t even allowed to manage their own finances and open bank accounts in the U.S. until 1974.) She predicted one big thing that came true within 24 hours, too, and was really so special, which is maybe something I’ll write about another time. I know it’s because I was open after that; I know it’s because I was light, lighter after that. Still, it also was that. It’s all always connected.
I told a friend at work about my experience that Monday, and we had a long, animated talk about it. He shared in the excitement of it, and shared what someone had once said to him, that had felt so profound to him then. It did to me, too. What if it all works out? Like, what if it does?
I think of that often, and I thought about recently when one corner of TikTok started talking about the Tinkerbell Effect recently. As packaged in the “manifestation” context, is essentially the idea that believing in something enough will make it happen. The recommended wordplay setup is apparently to frame it as a “What if” to bypass doubt otherwise triggered in the brain, and instead get us thinking of it in more of a concrete way. Laying imaginary bricks it into existence.
I think of so many what if’s in a day. It’s a mode of survival we have; it’s preparation for protection. What if I’m wrong? What if everything disappears? What if this car veers suddenly? And we end spending so brain time in imagined crisis; imagined crisis that can register as real.
Are we as prepared for "good” things to happen to us? Big things? Bountiful, beautiful things, in whatever way that means to us? Will we even see them or be able to receive them? We may feel like we need them, but have we played in the thought space of what it would actually be like?
What if everything works out? What if it’s all already worked out?
What if we have everything we need? What if it’s all already here?
For my friend Chuck and his ducks, because, what if it all works out?