ENG 1301.V06
April 6, 2015
My Lollipop Moment
Thich Nhat Hanh once said, “Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive, and our bodies are working marvelously. Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can still hear the voices of our loved ones.” I owe my sanity and happiness to this wonderful man who helped me overcome the fear and anxiety that plagued me on an everyday basis. Yet, my actual lollipop moment came from a very different source- one that was a complete accident.
Similar to Drew Dudley’s lollipop moment, mine came to me from a person who has no idea the impact they had and still continue to have on my life. This person, whose name is Chris, entered my life when I had just hit rock bottom and was floundering in a vast ocean of anxiety. One day, while trying to deal with my anxiety, I came across a video on YouTube. To this day, I still have no idea what prompted me to click on that video and watch it. But I did, and that was the moment my life began its rise out of the hole of misery I had been living in. So what was the video already?! In all honesty, it was just an interview he was participating in, and he happened to have once suffered through what I was. One may wonder why this person, of all the people in the world who have also suffered through anxiety just like me, had such an impact when no other person was able to. My closest guess is because his method was just so simple.
That day was a cool afternoon at university and I was outside trying to calm my racing heart and relax. Out of desperation, I stuck my headphones in my ears and clicked my music application. Instead, I hit the YouTube application and decided to just look up something amusing. I can’t remember how I found that video, but it popped up and I decided to watch it. The interviewer asks along the lines of, what advice