Before my daughter, Esther, left for Italy, she gave me an early Father’s Day present, the soundtrack to the Broadway play, “Hamilton.” I have listened to the music several times and have found the songs to be funny, enjoyable, and downright catchy.
One song in particular caught my attention. The song, “It’s Quiet Uptown,” tells the story of the unimaginable pain Alexander Hamilton and his family must endure. The Hamilton family left New York City to learn to live with unbearable loss and grief. What has been on my mind is the word “unimaginable.” Webster’s dictionary defines the word as “difficult or impossible to comprehend.” Many of us have experiences, or heard stories of, unimaginable pain, loss, or suffering. Natural disasters, war, famine, terrorism, divorce, and death are all ways that we as humans, experience the unimaginable. How we deal with the unimaginable differs as well. Many of us, myself included, have pushed away what we do not or cannot comprehend. As the song goes, “we push away the unimaginable.”
When we think of something unimaginable, we often associate the word with pain. Does the word always have to be viewed negatively? Can there be joy in the unimaginable? I believe there can be. Rarely do we spend time thinking about positive outcomes or positive accomplishments. Why is it so hard for us to believe in a positive future and frame our expectations in a positive light? Maybe it’s because we hear no about 30 times more frequently than the word yes. Maybe it’s because 80% of the 60,000 daily, random thoughts we have are negative. Maybe it’s because in our effort to grow up and act like adults we have replaced child-like fearlessness with self-doubt and emotional restraint.
Whatever the reason, we have forgotten how to imagine, how to believe, and how to dream. We push away joy, hope, success, and happiness because we cannot understand what it means to have or be those things. So how do we learn to live with the unimaginable?
To learn to live with the unimaginable, I recommend during three things:
1. Change our mindset. Let’s stop defining ourselves by what we are and start defining ourselves by who we are. Only when we are comfortable in our own skin are we able to step outside our comfort zones and try new things. Accepting ourselves as we are gives us the strength, conviction and courage to risk learning new things, reaching new goals, accepting failure.
2. Channel your 7-year old. Remember when you were a kid and you had no fear? At that age you haven’t been told you couldn’t do things, so you just did it. You lived the unimaginable every day on the playground, the schoolyard, or your back yard. Where is that inner 7-year old now?
3. Journal. Yes, I know that seems rather silly for grown adults to write in a diary. It might seem silly, but it works. The act of journaling allows you to replace the random, negative thoughts you think with structured, positive thoughts. Written, your words become real and have the power to help you see more clearly the path from unimaginable to reality.
Learn to live with the unimaginable. After all, isn’t that the goal?
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