What if it all works out?

As a lawyer, I see liability everywhere. That’s what I am paid to do. I’m paid to protect my organization from the downside of everything- I’m a walking liability-assessing machine, akin to an insurance claim adjuster. And it’s hard not to carry that mindset into my personal life. A mom of two children, on the daily I naturally spot risk and harm everywhere. I’m a mama bear protecting her cubs.

That mindset has served me well thus far. It has kept me and my family safe and protected. I am a shield guarded against the world, hands up ready to fight, ever-ready for the next disaster and calamity. But there’s a cost to the hardness and rigidity, a personal cost to bracing against life.

My mother is the most optimistic person I know. She can turn any negative situation into a positive one. She always sees the bright spot in something. It used to drive me nuts and perhaps why I turned a complete 180 degrees from her (ha!). For somebody who has been dealt a hard hand, it would have been easy for my mother to be bitter, drained of energy, and negative. But it is this very positive mindset that has helped her create a resilience that is unshakeable. She has faith that everything is going to work out okay. And in that way, this positive mindset has become her form of resistance.

As we celebrate Mother’s Day next Sunday, my mother’s optimism reminds me that there can be something gained by a better attitude towards life. Because, what if it all works out? That choosing to seeing the good, the light, the brightness, is just that, a choice. And while it is important to ascertain risk, to protect your loved ones, to make intentional and thoughtful decisions, sometimes, just sometimes, there are those moments that breakthrough, that emerge. Those moments are where the magic of life lives, when you can throw caution to the wind and believe that life will just work out well for yourself. It is in that space of certainty and uncertainty where you can hope of something better, where dreams are fulfilled, and where our lives can unfold in unpredictable and remarkable ways.

So on this day, Happy Mother’s Day to my dear mother, the ever-optimist, my bright spot, the most generous, beautifully-spirited and lovely person I know. May we all adopt a little of my mother today, allowing the sunshine to appear from behind the clouds, believing that something great is going to happen tomorrow and allowing life to perform its most splendid magic tricks on us. I love you, Amma!