By Leonard Citron, M.A.
Urban living in New York (and elsewhere), can involve living in close quarters, stacked in tenement buildings above and below neighbors in identically designed box like apartments. Through these ceilings and walls, often originally designed during the manufacturing boom in the late 19th and early 20th century, it’s not unusual to hear a thud as a neighbor removes their shoes. As one shoe makes a sound hitting the floor, the expectation for the other shoe to make a similar sound is created.
Waiting for the other shoe to drop has become synonymous with waiting for a seemingly inevitable event to happen, especially one that is not desirable.
After a lovely Memorial Day weekend spent with family and friends, I found myself feeling an acute sense of anxiety. For the life of me I could not work out what was behind it, since most things are going well at the moment. People, including myself, at times have a tendency to air on the negative, we prepare for the worst, so that just incase it actually happens we will be ready.
But what if we have periods in our life when things are ticking over nicely? What worst-case scenario should we prepare for then? Often clients talk about waiting for the other shoe to drop, and express feelings and worries that things can’t possibly stay good, that a catastrophe of some sort is around the corner. They may be right- things may not always be plain sailing but that doesn’t mean we have to invest energy worrying about something that hasn’t happened yet. If we do, we lose focus on the good going on and fail to enjoy positive moments.
The truth is, that if and when something does happen we are able to deal with it. It may not be pleasant but it is manageable. So maybe the other shoe isn’t going to drop, maybe there isn’t another shoe at all. So after going through the worst case scenarios in my mind, and accepting that these can be tolerated, I took my own advice and put the shoes back in the wardrobe where they belong and enjoyed the rest of my weekend.