I had just graduated from university when I asked my father a question I imagine many young adults have asked their parents:
“What now?”
Of course, I was looking for advice, a plan. A few steps. A sense of certainty about what I was supposed to do next.
My father, who was in his cups at the time, gave me this:
“Climb over the wall and hope you land on the other side with your trousers still on.”
This. Was. Not. Helpful.
I had wanted something specific. Something I could actually do. Instead I got a wall and a pair of trousers. I spent years resenting that answer.
Decades later, I see the genius in it – he gave me exactly what I needed, just not what I wanted.
A single step: Climb over the wall.
I’ve thought about that wall a lot over the years – there are so many in life. Some obvious. Some built so gradually that we don’t even realize we’re standing in front of one. Some are made of our own need for certainty.
- I know this.
- This is just how it is.
- People don’t change.
- I’ve already tried that.
- I know why this happened.
- That’s just who I am.
- I’ve done too much work to still be dealing with this.
- I know what they are going to do.
- I know how this ends.
And perhaps you do. Or perhaps you don’t.
This is the territory of seeing things differently. Not positive thinking, or pretending the past didn’t happen, or abandoning your discernment. Something both simpler and more difficult: being willing to question what you think you know.
To sit in the mystery of I wonder.
I wonder.
Those two words have changed the way I see everything.
If we keep looking at our ourselves, our relationships, our history, or the future through the same lens, we can make different choices and still find ourselves circling the same ground. And sometimes the next thing to learn isn’t another tool. Instead it’s something we’re finally willing to see.
That can feel surprisingly radical.
We live in a time when certainty is seductive. We want answers, guarantees, someone to tell us what to do so we can get it right.
But here’s the jiggy… If someone else gives us the instructions, we don’t have to take full responsibility for what happens next. And if it doesn’t work, we know who to blame.
My father’s answer gave me no such escape hatch.
Over the decades, climbing over the wall has taken many forms. Mostly it looked like sitting in: What might it look like to be informed by my experiences without being defined by them?
That is a very different place to stand.
No need to deny what happened. No need to turn it into a beautiful story. One can acknowledge what was handed to them and decide what will be carried forward
Seeing differently means standing firmly in: It ends with me.
The wall doesn’t always need to be conquered. Sometimes leaning against long enough to discover it was never as solid as you thought. Or thet you only need to climb halfway before you can see what was invisible from the ground.
And that requires trust – the willingness to say I don’t know what happens next and taking the next step anyway.
There is something holy in that – a faith that does not require certainty. A trust in something greater than ourselves. I sometimes think of it as pronoia—the possibility that life is, in some mysterious way, conspiring in our favor.
This, by no means, signifies that we will get what we want, or the wall will disappear, or that we won’t land on the other side with our trousers tangled around our ankles.
We just have to be willing to engage with what is actually possible – get curious about the wall. To look at the thing you’ve decided is impossible, inevitable, finished, hopeless, or just the way things are and ask: What might I see if I were willing to look again?
And yet, here’s what no one can do for you: decide whether you are willing to live from what you discover.
Seeing differently has consequences.
I know this much:
The landscape on the other side of a wall is almost never visible from where you are standing. You have to move to see it.
This is the work I care about most.
Not telling you what to think, nor handing you another formula for getting love “right.” But creating enough space for you to see what you haven’t been able—or perhaps haven’t been willing—to see yet.
What becomes possible when we see differently? Everything.
So.
There is a wall.
Maybe you’ve known it was there for a long time, have built your life around it, are well practiced at explaining why it can’t be climbed.
I’m not here to tell you to knock it down. I’m simply inviting you to look at it again.
And wonder.
What if this isn’t the only way to see it?
Climb over the wall and see.
Subscribe to my weekly Love Notes — direct, clear, personal notes about love, relationships, and the things we don’t always see clearly.
I’m Joëlle Lydon — author of Unbreakable Us, artist, and relationship guide.
I help people create better intimacy by removing the barriers that keep them from it.
I envision a world where relationship is no longer an unconscious pattern we repeat, but a conscious partnership we create—one where ease, trust, and peace can emerge from how we show up for one another.