The pedicurist examined my toenails a couple of days ago. I expected her to say that their condition was shameful, or something of that ilk. Instead, she said, “you like your toenails short,” in a tone of voice that made me feel as though I should be in church atoning for an original sin. I explained that I was a runner, and if I do not keep my nails trimmed, they can get bruised. Then they turn black, fall off, and it takes months for them grow back. I predicted that she would sniff and reply that I should consider swimming as an exercise alternative, but rather, she looked at me, and said, “that’s why you are skinny.”
When I left a half hour later, she told me to keep running. I patted her arm, and said, “you should try running too, you would love it.” What I meant to say was that attempting something new opened a world of possibility. It might turn out that she would fall in love with paddleboarding, not running, or that hiking was the outdoor experience that filled her with bliss. Well, at least it does for some. But for me, though I feel pretty darn happy after I sit down, drop my backpack, enjoy the view, and drink ridiculously tepid water that for some reason is as delicious as freshly squeezed orange juice, I mostly pray that the rest of the hike is downhill. But you get my point.
Possibility - perhaps the most underappreciated emotion in human consideration. Its beauty lies in its expansive infinity. I relish possibilities more than probabilities, and that serves me well. Just this morning on a dog walk, I brought along a second poop bag because every sixty or eighty walks is a double poop event. After Boomer did his business, Good Samaritan Me used the second bag to pick up someone else’s dog poop. I almost threw both bags away, as our walk was nearly over, but it occurred to me that Boomer might not be done, and sure enough, he was not. That confirmed to me that preparedness is next to godliness.
I recently purchased my first lottery ticket in over a decade, when it rose to $1.3 billion, because it was fun to think about what I would do if I won. But setting aside infinitesimally small monetary fantasies, my most positive life moments turn on thinking of what might lie ahead.
My belief in the richness of the world stems from seeing it unfold in inexplicably delightful ways. I watch the parents of a young boy who are enamored with him beyond contemplation, even more so because of the harrowing journey it took to conceive and deliver him to the world. I started my law firm twenty years ago, terrified at the statistical failure rates of new businesses, but lured by the potential of creating a work life that was governed by my values alone. Its success exceeded my wildest fantasies. I timidly asked my cousin and his wife to take a bike trip with me and my husband in southern Vermont in 2014, wondering whether it would be more exhausting than exhilarating, but it launched a magical, active-vacation wanderlust within me.
And today I will celebrate with others the union of two people whose meeting was statistically minute, virtually unfathomable. Distance, family health tragedy, international travel quagmires, and a world pandemic intervened in a fledging relationship; it seemed inevitable that life events would distract and disrupt their romance. But it did not. Their love is so obviously apparent, joyful, and generous, that its existence seems grounded in fate not fortuity.
Which goes to show that the power of possibility lies not just in chance or circumstance, but in absolute certainty.