The Next Right Step

Excerpt from Plain Dealer Columnist Regina Brettʼs new book “God Never Blinks”

Lesson 2: When in Doubt, Just Take the Next Right Step.

 

 My life used to be like that game of freeze tag we played as kids. Once tagged, you had to freeze in the position you were in. Whenever something happened, I'd freeze like a statue, too afraid of moving the wrong way, of making the wrong decision.

The problem is, if you stand still too long, that's your decision.

There's a moment in the special “A Charlie Brown Christmas” where Charlie Brown stops to see Lucy, the 5-cent psychiatrist. Lucy drills him: “Are you afraid of responsibility?

If you are, then you have hypengyophobia.”
Charlie Brown answers, "I don't think that's quite it.”
"How about cats? If you're afraid of cats, you have ailurophasia.”
"Well, sort of, but I'm not sure.”
“Are you afraid of staircases? If you are, then you have climacophobia. Maybe you have thalassophobia. This is fear of the ocean, or gephyrophobia, which is the fear of crossing bridges. Or maybe you have pantophobia. Do you think you have pantophobia?"
"What's pantophobia?"

"The fear of everything," she says.

"THAT'S IT!" Charlie Brown screams

That's me.

I stumbled through high school using alcohol as my compass. I went to college in my back yard because I couldn't imagine all the steps it would take to apply and get accepted and leave home and live in a dorm at a college outside Ravenna, Ohio.

I rode a bus six miles every day from Ravenna to Kent, not because Kent State University was a good, solid, affordable state school, which it was, but because I couldn't imagine how to make the leap and move away to college like my three older sisters and brother did. They went off to Ohio State University, one of the biggest colleges in the country. At Kent, my world stayed small and safe. I ate in the cafeteria with people from my high school.

A year or two into college, I flunked chemistry. It got too hard, so I quit going to class. I changed my major three times. Then I got pregnant at 21 and dropped out of school. I quit drinking for good but stumbled through jobs that weren't right for me. A traffic clerk. A legal secretary. An office manager. A funeral home assistant picking up dead bodies.

What would I do with my life? The future overwhelmed me. Then one day a friend suggested this: just do the next right thing.

That's it?

I can do that.


Usually we know the next step to take but it's so small we don't see it because our vision is focused too far ahead and all we can see is a giant, scary leap instead of a small, simple step. So we wait. And wait. And wait, as if the Master Plan will be revealed in a massive blueprint rolled out like a red carpet at our feet.

Even if it were, we'd be too scared to step onto it.

I wanted to finish college, wanted a career I loved instead of a job I endured, but what should I major in? How would I pay for it? What job would it lead to? There were so many unanswered questions.

One day my mom revealed the next right step. "Just get a course catalog," she suggested.

That's it?

I can do that. So I got the catalog. Then I opened it up. Then I skimmed the pages with a highlighter and marked classes I'd like to take solely because they looked interesting, not because I had to earn a degree in something.

I sat on the floor in the living room flipping page after page. At first, like a kid whose favorite class is recess, I marked recreation classes - horseback riding, hiking and backpacking. Then a couple of psychology and art classes. Then a slew of English classes. I turned every, single page, reading every course description until I found a treasure trove. Newswriting. Reporting. Magazine writing. Feature writing. Wow. I went all the way from anthropology to zoology. Finished, flipped back and looked at what courses got the most highlights.

Writing.

So I took one writing class. Then another. Then another.

 When in doubt, do the next right thing. It's usually something quite small. As

 E.L. Doctorow said, writing a book is like driving a car at night. "You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."

That philosophy applies to life, too. The headlights on my car shine 350 feet, but even with that much light, I can travel all the way to California. I need to see only enough light to get moving.

I graduated with a journalism degree from Kent State when I turned 30. Ten years later, I got my master's degree in religious studies from John Carroll University. I never set out to get a master's degree. If I had counted the years (five), the cost (thousands), and the time in the classroom, doing homework, doing research (late evenings, lunch hours, weekends), I never would have mailed that first tuition check.

I just took one class, then another and another, and one day I was done.

It was like that raising my daughter. I never dreamed I'd be a single parent for all 18 years of her childhood. My daughter finished high school the same month I got my master's degree. I'm glad I didn't know when I gave birth to her at 21 what it would cost in terms of time, money and sacrifice to bring her to that graduation day.

Every so often some expert calculates how much it costs to raise a child. It's in the six-figure range. The money doesn't scare would-be parents away, but if someone calculated all the time and energy it took to raise a child, the human race would become extinct.

The secret to success, to parenting, to life, is to not count up the cost. Don't focus on all the steps it will take. Don't stare into the abyss at the giant leap it will take.

That view will keep you from taking the next small step.

If you want to lose 40 pounds, you order salad instead of fries. If you want to be a better friend, you take the phone call instead of screening it. If you want to write a novel, you sit down and write a single paragraph.

It’s scary to make major changes, but we usually have enough courage to take the next right step. One small step and then another. That’s what it takes to raise a child, to get a degree, to write a book, to do whatever it is your heart desires.

What’s your next right step? Whatever it is, take it.