it's supposed to be this fun
on becoming someone who giggles more than she grips
the drive home is quiet and normal. same roads, same weather, same stores. an idea starts filling the car. my energy perks up. by the time i pass the library i’m already pulling in, urgent to get it all written out. i stay an hour. i walk out with unexpected tears. and there, at the entrance — four pennies scattered, waiting for me. like they’d been there the whole time. the giggles come out before i can stop them.
“is it supposed to be this fun and random?” i can hear her smile on the phone between giggles making their way out.
yes. yes it is.
she's been living in the flow for six months now, and the joy pouring out of her is contagious. i’m brought back to sitting on the lawn in hanalei, sipping matcha with a friend, laughing about the many random jobs that kept appearing for me. one after the other. often and unexpected. so easy, we’d dissolve into laughter about it.
my life makes no sense and perfect sense all at once.
this is what the artist’s way means by finding the river and saying yes to its flow. not some philosophical idea. this. the giggles. the randomness that actually works. the things arriving without you forcing them into being. i read the quote this week — “recovery is the process of finding the river and saying yes to its flow, rapids and all” — and felt something relax in me. i love the river. the rapids. the flow. it’s not something i’m trying to access anymore. it has been lived. it is the giggles on the lawn. the matcha spilling because we’re laughing too hard.
a friend and i were just talking about what it feels like to have a secret language with someone. that flirtatious knowing that exists between you and another party. the giddy, playful energy of an inside joke only two people are in on.
pennies are my secret language with the universe.
truly flirtatious little winks in our private joke. and on saturday, following the random flow of the day with my partner — one penny walking the dogs, one outside the thrift store, one in a newly paved beach parking lot — i was joyous and buzzing, riding the high of the four library pennies the day before.
we stopped into the grocery store on the drive home. at the self-checkout line: one penny. walking to our station: a second. i glanced over and spotted a third between a stranger’s feet, dissolving into hushed giggles as my partner scanned our items. i told him in a whisper, barely containing it.
then we turned to leave and he burst out laughing.
a fourth penny. waiting for him.
the tune of *it's raining men* started playing in my head. it's raining pennies. seven pennies in one day! i was giddy beyond belief. calm and happy and permanently smiling, laughing at something most people around me couldn’t see.
the biggest shift i’m noticing while working through the 12-week course isn’t that i’ve learned something new. it’s that everything i’ve been reading, hoping, trying to understand for years — it’s landed. fully. in my body.
it’s no longer a theory. it’s just true.
the artist’s way reminded me this week: we must learn to let the flow manifest itself where it will, not where we will it.
a past version of me was trying to make things happen. now i’m watching things happen and saying yes. giggling along the way.
the pennies aren’t a reward for good behavior. they’re evidence that the supply is endless. that magic isn’t scarce. that when i stop gripping — when i stop trying to will it into being the way i think it should arrive — it arrives anyway. differently. better. sometimes four at a time in a grocery store while your partner and you crack up at the self-checkout stumbling out of the store.
what’s your secret language with the universe — and when did you last let yourself giggle about it?
missed the last one?
Ally, what a wonderful way to describe a lighthearted approach to life - sussinct and powerful.
I am moved to declare that this will be my new mantra and I know am becoming more of a giggler and less of a gripper. Thank you!