100. The Other Shoe

Nora shares the importance of not waiting for the next bad thing. 

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

INTRO MUSIC 

 I am Nora McInerny, and it’s going to be okay. 

If you have been through something difficult. If you have ever had your best laid plans ripped to shreds by the unexpected or had the bottom fallout from you, you might already know that there is not a punch card that you fill up that tells the world you have lived through enough already.

You have actually met your capacity for hardship and you don’t need anymore. And if you’re too young to know what a punch card is, imagine whatever apps you currently use to get points or free things at your favorite retailer. Imagine that on a small. Business card, a really small piece of paper that you put in your wallet and then somehow lose.

As soon as you have nine punches and you’re just one punch away from that free smoothie, your just one paper stamp away from a free six inch sub sandwich at Subway.

Life just keeps happening day after day, which is comforting to know when you are in the hard thing and kind of scary sometimes when that thing is over, because what is going to go wrong next? And when? When exactly will the other shoe drop? How long will we have to wait? And what the hell are we talking about when we say the other shoe drops?

Well, I Googled it ’cause I didn’t have an answer. And it’s a reference to living in the tenement apartments of New York City where all the apartments had the same layout. So bedroom above bedroom, above bedroom. And you could hear the tenant in the apartment above you take off his boots at the end of a long workday and drop them on the floor, which is your ceiling.

One shoe drops, boom, and you wait for the other. And shoes used to be heavier. We’re not talking about like Crocs here. Inevitably, that other shoe does drop, the footwear related interruptions are over and you can fall asleep. But there are not just two shoes in life. There are so many shoes to drop. Just countless shoes you could spend all.

Night your whole life, waiting for the shoe to drop. You could spend your entire life in a defensive stance, tense from head to toe waiting for something bad to happen, or you could just know that it will inevitably, and that can be really scary or really freeing. I cannot promise you that today is gonna be a good one.

I cannot promise you that today is going to be a great day or even a good one, but I can promise you this, that it will not always feel like it does right now if you’re in a tough place right now. That’s a comforting thought. If you’re having a good day, I am not trying to ruin it. I have been a person who lived in that state of tension waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It sucked and it was really stressful for me and was really stressful for everyone who knew me and through therapy. I am now a person who knows that the other shoe will drop that I cannot control when it does or where it does. I am a person who knows that more than two shoes. I’m a person who knows that more than two shoes can and will drop that really life will be a nice sprinkling of shoes, dropping willy-nilly all over the place, and then left in the middle of the living room for you to trip on.

What I am trying to say is if things are good right now, enjoy it. What I’m trying to say, If that thi, what I am trying to say is that if things are good right now, just enjoy it. And if things are hard right now, just wait. We can promise very little to one another, but I can promise you this however it feels, it won’t always feel like it does right now.  

OUTRO MUSIC 

CREDITS