“How are you doing?” my therapist asked as I sat down on her couch for an extra holiday-edition of therapy. I’d scheduled it anticipating the usual emotional mayhem, but strangely found myself without much to talk about, mostly because I’d dealt with and addressed what had been bothering me directly as it came up.
“I’m doing pretty well,” I began. “And I’m surprisingly not stressed out at all over this holiday season.”
“Well, you’re the only person who has said that to me!” she replied.
I consider that some sort of therapeutic breakthrough – in addition to some genuine progress in how I’ve reached at this stress-free moment of living. Arriving at the final weeks of 2025, in the year that found me turning fifty years old, one of those indelible light-bulb revelations of understanding lit up in my head – the kind that, once ignited and seen, can never be turned off altogether or forgotten. It’s rare to have such moments, and even rarer to realize them as they are happening. It’s also not something Ive fully processed or formulated into words – similar to the way I stopped drinking, which hinged on a internal realization, and, more importantly, a deep and profound understanding of and connection to that realization.
This time around the lesson/revelation is a simple but powerful one – that we are in complete command of our world. Not in what precisely happened to us on any given day – we don’t always have a say in what the world doles out – but in how we react and deal with whatever happens.
That’s right – whatever happens.
If it’s not impressing you with the weight and magnitude of what that means you may be like I was for the last fifty years; I knew it in some abstract, universal truth sort of way, but never truly made the connection until recently.
There’s so much more to say on it, and I’m not equipped or able to do that here. Not yet. It is, however, the ideal launching pad for a brand new calendar which quickly approaches, and we head into our 23rd year here at ALANILAGAN.com…
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