The Worst Thing That Can Happen

What’s the worst thing that can happen to you? Shite childhood? Poor health? Financial disaster? Social media toxicity aimed your way? Festering anger rotting your heart? Friends or family who betray you? Job loss? Divorce? Death? A tasting menu from all the above?

The worst thing that can happen to you is nothing.

I say so having by now known too many perfectly lovely people, to whom nothing has ever happened. Nothing bad happened in their childhoods. They had great parents, enjoyed school, fit in, had friends, have jobs, have spouses, have health and homes. Their lives are basic.

Nothing ever happens.

Too many of these perfectly lovely people don’t know who they are one bit. All grown up, they still don’t know what they want to be. They are bored, they are restless, yet they can’t make decisions, would never take a risk. They can’t stick to one thing, they are passionless, visionless, they never hold their breath. Some, in their quietest moments, will acknowledge they realize their lives are slipping away… nothing ever happens. They are dead at half-life, though it will be decades before they are buried.

Because nothing ever happened. No contrast ever ruffled their feathered nests, all beige, safe, muted, and just so.

Nothing is the worst thing that can happen to you. >Tweetable

Then there are the rest of us. We wish our beginnings had been calmer, safer. We wish we had been popular in school, less tormented, less black sheep. We wish we hadn’t been faced – and still face – circumstances that scare us. We wish it didn’t always feel like we are being tested. We wish we felt ahead of things. (We wish, some of us, that we weren’t actually kind of attracted, all grown up, to the holy-crap! of life.)

But would you rather be mighty, or weak? Plod or be nimble? Know or ponder? Would you rather be bold or dispassionate? Would you rather risk and rise, or play safe and stay? Would you rather have developed a strength of character combining moxie, street smarts, curiosity and gut instinct that takes you charging down yet another road less traveled – or check first with everyone else about that road, see what they think, maybe scan the Internet?

The worst thing that can happen to you is nothing. (I have known too many perfectly lovely people.)

I am a guy for whom nothing never happened. Nothing doesn’t even know my name.

This year, thus far, has been intense and filled with anything but nothing, including more unwanted loss and disruption than I could have imagined. Family matters. A stalker. Shockingly nasty attacks by people who misunderstood a blog I posted about Caitlyn Jenner (bonus: death threats!). The sudden passing of my darling cat, Annie. Patrick and I separating.

And I would take it all again, over nothing. Nothing is the worst.

It is Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada, my favourite holiday. The trees are screaming glory, the fall air is ideal, the sun is low in the sky. I like a time set aside in our society to focus on being thankful, and it will feel good over the weekend when I up the ante of my regular gratitude and make time to write an uber-list of what I appreciate in my life.

Because every time I do I am humbled by all the blessings I enjoy – because of not nothing.

This Thanksgiving, this intense year, while I’ll still give thanks for the obvious good and awesome, I’ll also give thanks for all the shock, the drama, the buggers, the twits, the twists, the turns, the scares, the anger, the holy crap!

Because, like you, I have been through it all before. Nothing doesn’t even know my name, and history has taught me that the hot glue gun mess of it all carries me – carries us – where it always has: to what I want for me, and what you want for you.

I said to someone just yesterday: “I don’t know why all this shit’s gone down this year, but I do know it is all for my greater good. I do know there is so much good that wants me, and that wants everyone.”

Even perfectly lovely people, glad and hoping that nothing ever happens.

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• Related: Life Hacks – How To Manage Life’s Unmanageables
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