Every day now people send messages of concerns about the animals or the barn cats or the chickens. Will they travel? Seek to find their own home? What about the chickens. Are they coming? Not. Will Rocky get along with the donkeys? Will Frieda jump the fence?

These messages all come from a place of love and concern, and I appreciate them. “It’s natural,” wrote one lovely human. “We just worry.”

I thanked her, but I said I don’t need people to worry about me. Believe me,  I can do that myself. And Maria and I will take great care of the animals. We don’t have to follow that old and hoary script.

I’d prefer people not worry for me unless it is this:

Worry that it will be fine. Will all work out. Will be a fun, satisfying and meaningful experience. Worry that every dog, donkey and chicken and cat and ewe and ram will be moved safely, compassionately and securely. Because that is what I intend. If I chose to make this about everything that could go wrong – the expense, selling the farm, panicky sheep, stubborn donkeys, roaming barn cats, confused dogs then it would be an awful experience, a sad one. We are conditioned in this world to live in a state of fear and alarm and to confuse worry with love.

Worry is not love. If you love me and are concerned about me – and I know many people are – then do me the favor of worrying that this will all go happily and well and help me sail forward with Maria in a cloud of good feeling and true affection.

All morning I navigated through lawyers, closing procedures, grumpy electric company employes, fences, phone companies, confusing phone trees, requests for passwords and ID’s, bank procedures,closing protocols. In this new world, no one wants to speak on the phone, no one want to speak to each other. You can go online. Everyone is tense, impatient. What’s your date of birth? Your social security? Everywhere the pretense of concern and security, the reality of detachment and looming anxiety. But it always gets worked out, it always happens.

Before each phone call I said this. This call brings me closer to my life. Closer to the next thing. It is a part of the process. I am grateful that I am good at it. I remind myself to be patient, to be excited about our new home, to begin labyrinthine processes of moving this world to the next one.

This for me, is part of awakening. I don’t follow that  script any longer. I’ve wasted enough time on it.  I choose to worry that it will all be fine. Come along on that trip instead.