Until I read this meme on my Instagram last week, I had not previously considered the importance of anticipation in the care of my own mental health.
Don’t get me wrong—I love anticipation. I get as much joy out of looking forward to an event or an activity as I do in the actual experience. I had just never thought about it in the context of something my heart and nervous system need for good self-care.
How easy it is for me to become so consumed by the responsibility of the moment and the discomfort of being a sensitive human in a difficult world that I forget life also brings me smile-worthy experiences. I need the gift of anticipation to help us remember that joy, and safety, and pleasure still exist.
Sometimes we are able to anticipate things outside our control—such as the cycle of the seasons. For example, by about mid-February, I begin anticipating the arrival of Spring. I don’t know when the sun’s warmth will begin to melt the snow, but I have certainty that it will. To be honest, every season has something in it that I delight in, and I anticipate that gift all year long. As I consider these seasonal joys, I feel my heart lighten.
I want to create more of this lightness. I want to feel it for myself, and I want to share it with those around me. This motivates me to create opportunities for anticipation, to set myself up to experience something pleasurable and to allow myself to look forward to that experience.
Not long ago, I was sitting in spiritual direction with a person who works in an emotionally demanding environment and occupation. They realized that midweek is the most difficult part of their week, which then led them to start asking themselves how they could offer themselves something to look forward to on Wednesday evenings.
As I have applied this in my own life, I’ve noticed that sometimes I need to make a conscious choice to allow myself the gift of anticipation. As much as I love looking forward to future significant fun experiences, it’s easy for me dismiss the more routine “good things” as not worthy of my anticipation.
I’m not suggesting we focus on something in the future as a way of sidestepping the discomfort of the present moment. Rather, I’m inviting us to hold both the anticipated joy and the present heaviness together.
As Shannen Martin writes in her book, Counterweights, “What are the things that are keeping me going? For me, it’s clawing for those little tiny moments where we can. I need to see myself take care of myself.” She goes on to say, “We have to carry a lot of really heavy things in one hand. We don’t choose these things. We would never have asked for them. And we can’t just put them down. We don’t have control over them. We can’t just set them aside. So how do we carry these heavy things? We fill the other hand with heavy goodness.”
We are living in times where every news cycle brings more heaviness. It not only replenishes daily—it also accumulates. This adds to the daily struggles of being human, and the weight we all carry as part of showing up for our own lives.
In this setting, joy easily evaporates unnoticed. Deliberately choosing anticipation is one way of paying attention to the lighter moments. Anything we find enjoyable is worthy of our anticipation. Not only that, but anticipating those “small” good things is a way of reminding myself to actually notice the joy when it shows up.
When I start feeling overwhelmed by life’s struggle, I’ve found it helps to deliberately choose something to anticipate. When it happens, I then remind myself to savour the happiness in it. This increases my capacity to notice the next joy on the horizon. These accumulated experiences then increase my capacity to bear the heaviness without being consumed by it.
For me, anticipation as a soul-practice looks like noticing the iris buds in my garden, getting plumper every day, about to burst open with colour and texture. It also looks like savouring the arrival tomorrow of one of my loved ones who has been travelling for work. It also looks like letting myself daydream a little about the family camping/fishing trip we will experience later this month.
What is your experience with anticipation? What do you have to look forward to in the next day or week?
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