The lush leaves against the cloudless sky made for a perfect scenic drive back home to Toronto from Montreal. It was a good weekend, the kind of weekend that was planned weeks ago to take care of some business but then unexpectedly morphed into something else. That “something else” turned out to be long walks through bustling parks, brunching al fresco under a Tuscan-like sun, and sharing laughs with half-strangers, now friends.

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As I drove home, I happened upon the Modern Wisdom Podcast episode with Mo Gawdat. The title, How To Save Your Brain From The Dangers Of Stress & Anxiety, did NOT resonate with me at first, but after a few minutes of listening, I felt like the universe conspired to have me hear this episode at this exact moment in my life. I had this feeling once before. Many years ago, I went to NYC for the weekend only to have to return home by bus after being there just a few hours – Hurricane Sandy shut down the city, including all nearby airports. For some reason, I had Paulo Coelho’s book, The Alchemist, in my bag, though I can’t for the life of me remember where I got it or why I had it. In any case, I read it cover to cover on that very long bus ride home. Reading that book at that time was no accident. It changed my life so much so that I now refer to my life in eras: pre- and post-The Alchemist.

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I am well acquainted with stress and anxiety, but up until this moment, I believed I was one of the rare few who learned to handle stressful situations with poise and relative ease, so this podcast topic about the dangers of stress and anxiety did not resonate. But, when Mo spoke about spiritual stress, the veil of my delusion began to lift. He spoke about intuition and how it kept compelling him to “write, write, write,” but his busy life kept telling him to “delay, delay, delay.” Not listening to your intuition is stressful. Feeling like you are not where you are supposed to be is stressful. Not answering the call to adventure is stressful.

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Being the practical person that I am, resisting that nagging voice always felt like the responsible thing to do, and anything short of that would be self-indulgent. So, I ignored the stress indicators, dismissing things like inflammation, depression, and physical pain as part of the natural aging process. The logic: the older I get, the worse the symptoms become. The reality: the more I ignore my intuition, the louder the knock.

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I was profoundly moved by Mo Gawdat’s words, and I spent the rest of the drive thinking about why. Why this podcast? Why the call to write? Why the constant denial? Maybe I’ll never really know the answers to these big questions, but what I do know is that writing helps me figure things out. The process of writing allows me to discover hidden treasures and while I don’t always appreciate the value of these treasures or why I’m the one called to find them, I do enjoy the experience of getting lost in it all.

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The reason I don’t “indulge” more often is that I convince myself there won’t be any tangible outcome. But what if not answering the call is producing the unintended consequences previously mentioned? Maybe I’m not dodging the “stress” bullet at all and the latent effects, decades in the making, are now surfacing.

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In writing this piece, I have come to the realization that I have wired my brain in such a way that drives me away from my purpose rather than towards it. For every moment of inspiration that compels me to listen, there are half a dozen reasons not to. So, this time, on my drive home from this “something else” weekend, I held on to the knocking. By the time I reached home, instead of chucking out the inspiration, I embraced it, and it’s starting to feel like the dawn of a new era.

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