My husband and I celebrated our birthdays this weekend. I’m forty-five. He’s forty-two.
Yes, we have the same birthday. What are the odds that spouses share a birthday? I looked it up, and while numbers vary, it might be around .27%. The probability is low, but clearly it’s a possibility.
Probability
When I was young, I liked that math so often yielded clear answers. When studying for my master of public health, statistics offered tools to research and answer so many of my health-related questions.
And while the part of my human mind that craves certainty still finds some comfort in numbers, after forty-five trips around the sun I’m more and more aware of how numbers can be limiting for the soul when they disconnect us from possibility.
Before our daughter was born my mom picked out a book for her that’s still one of my favorites. Buzzy the Bumblebee tells a story about a young bumblebee named Buzzy who reads that—according to studies and research—bumblebees weren’t made to fly. After reading (and believing) this news, he loses his ability to fly. It’s not until his parents remind him that he absolutely can fly that he reconsiders his beliefs:
“You certainly can fly!
Until now, that is,
And do you know why?”
“You’re doubting yourself,
Fear is blocking the way
Listen to your heart Buzzy,
Not to what others say.”
“Ignore labels and limits,
They seldom do good,
They make you think you can’t
When inside you know you could.”
Possibility
My lived experience has shown me how believing in possibilities offers more healing and fullness of life than just believing the numbers. If I believed the experts who told me my exocrine pancreatic function would never return, I’d not have a functioning pancreas now.
I had a moment in the shower last week. It was the kind of moment where you panic over time flying and you ache for the promise of enough of it. (Also the kind of moment where you look at your forty-five years of wrinkles from feeling and living, and you curse our culture that glorifies youth).
If only someone could guarantee me 90-years-old, I think. The odds of making it to 90 aren’t too bad for me.
Then I had another moment. The kind where I remember how statistics won’t give me what my soul is aching for.
Certainty is the ego’s craving.
My soul craves evolution through my human experience.
This happens independent of statistics and expert opinions. It happens when I dwell in possibility (thank you Emily Dickinson).
I can believe probabilities AND possibilities (note: neither are immune to bias), but dwelling in possibility empowers me.
Dwelling in possibility allows us to fly, even when the studies and research say we shouldn’t be able to. It allows us to heal, even when the prognosis says we won’t. It allows us to live more fully in this moment, even when the next moment is uncertain.
My husband and I sharing a birthday isn’t very probable. But, here we are, dwelling in possibility (and shared birthdays).
