not even for a moment, without feeling all the love. I tell everyone I was his favorite grandchild, but I believe he made each of his grandchildren feel like his favorite. He came to every rehearsal for every play I ever did. He took me out to breakfast at the Ideal Diner, just him and me, before anyone else in the house woke up. And he always gave me a little bit of cash. “A person needs some walking-around money,” he would tell me.
On the way to his funeral, I swear I saw him standing on the corner, wearing the hat with the feather in it and a string tie, jingling the change in his pocket. He nodded at me. “You got this, kid,” I imagined him saying. I hear him say that in my head every time I need a little push.
Papa was sad sometimes. Undiagnosed depression, I imagine. He would sit alone now and again, eyes closed, lost in his thoughts. But after he had some time to “rest his eggies,” as he would say, he would put on his hat and motion to the door: “Let’s get out of here.” Then he would take me on one sort of adventure or another. Papa was my hero. Herbert is my unicorn. Everyone needs an inner unicorn.
Being That Unicorn isn’t about being perfect. It isn’t about glossing over the hard stuff or the sad stuff. It’s about being true to yourself and not letting life hold you down, because it certainly will try. The only real magic in the world is the magic you will find inside your own head. You can use it to hold you up and propel you forward and to help others to do the same. You use it when you feel like you just can’t.
“Herbert, we’ve got to wrangle this,” I whisper in my own ear, and away we go. Sometimes, I imagine him carrying me into battle. It’s a silly image, I suppose. But I kind of love it. It makes me smile and it gives me that little push I need to do the things that of course I can do, despite fearing that I can’t.
You don’t have to name your unicorn. Ultimately, your unicorn is you. But it helps me to feel like I have an ongoing partner in crime. It means I’m never alone. Herbert is my spirit guide, my magic feather, my Jiminy Cricket, my inner voice. To be That Unicorn is to heed that whisper that never falters. The magic is in discovering and trusting what you’re hearing, that consistent message that says you are amazing.
You are amazing…and yet things are still going to get messed up now and again. Here’s the difference between unicorns and everyone else: That Unicorn knows it’s worth picking up the pieces. What’s the other choice anyway? Wallowing? That’s no fun and so very unproductive. And that’s not the person we look up to and long to be. It just isn’t. We long to be the person who walks through life horn up, not horn down. Who doesn’t ignore the puddles, but instead puts on her boots and jumps through them. Who doesn’t leave others in the muck, but leads the way around the mess. Who treats others the way she wants to be treated, not for gain but simply (as my wife likes to say) because it’s the right thing to do.
That Unicorn knows that the natural enemy of life is becoming overwhelmed. When we get overwhelmed, we lose sight of what we wanted in the first place. That Unicorn is an ace at keeping her eye on the prize. To live like That Unicorn is the ultimate goal. The good news is, we don’t have to be perfect at it. The great news is, with our inner unicorn as our guide, we just might have a chance at doing a pretty darn good job of it.
All day long and from every angle, we hear what we should be doing, how we should be doing it, and what we should look like while we’re at it. Most of what is thrown at us is preposterously unattainable. Much of it is about giving our money to companies who care very little about us but a whole lot about making money. Life is a much shorter trip than you might think. My dad says to think of it as an amusement park to which you can only ever get one ticket, and, once it’s closed, it’s closed. You have one chance to ride the rides and see the shows and taste the cotton candy and connect with the other people there.
You can waste your time being afraid—afraid you’ll look silly on the ride, worried you won’t laugh at the right parts of the show, stressed you’ll throw up from the cotton candy, scared that, if you wait in line for this ride, then the line for the other might get too long. You can live in fear, and you can miss it all. Or you can go for it. You can trust that you know best what you can do, what you want to do, and what you can handle. And you go for it. I know that I don’t want to spend my life sitting on the bench. I know because I used to do exactly that.
I used to be the coat and drinks and backpack holder. Whatever the activity, I held down the fort with everyone’s things while everyone else enjoyed the day. One afternoon, I was at Walt Disney World with my best friend and my then seven-year-old daughter, standing in line for Splash Mountain. We had just reached the “point of no return,” which is where I planned to duck out. But before I stepped out of line, I looked to my right and there it was: the mommy bench. There sat the saddest-looking mommies at Disney, covered with snotty, crying kids crawling on their pitiful-looking moms draped in already discarded souvenirs and acetate costumes. And to my left was a line full of kids and adults alike, talking and laughing and all excited to go on the ride. The life metaphor simply could not be denied.
I decided to go on that ride. And, you know what? It was really fun. And I wondered in that moment about the things I had missed and the things I would continue to miss. That initiated The Year of Yes. And that first year led to many more years, which led to learning to ski and rock-climb, rappelling down the façade of an eighteen-story hotel, feeding sharks and diving with octopi, and a list of a zillion other wild and even not-so-wild things. I gave up the bench and decided to grab hold of that one-day-only ticket and, well, live. That was the day my unicorn journey really took off in earnest.
That Unicorn knows how to live.
When it comes to living, That Unicorn acknowledges that…
It is. All of it. No, really. Not some of it. All of it. Even the most uncurated post is still curated. The picture was taken, right? The post was written, right? And either one or both got posted, right? Those acts in and of themselves were executed, even if subconsciously. The photo was taken to post or with posting in mind. The subject, the angle, the light, all of it was curated. The words were written specifically for posting. Each word chosen for others to read and approve of and comment on.
Social media is fake. It’s not about connecting us or bringing us together. It’s not about sharing. If it were, it would look totally different. And, sure, it can connect us. But that’s not its purpose. What it really serves to do is precisely what its unfortunate roots set out to do—to judge and compare people. It started out as hot or not. Now it’s hot or not…plus wealthy or not, successful or not, married or not, traveling or not. You get the idea.
So, That Unicorn knows that social media is nothing more than a game. If you feel like playing and you can do it without getting hurt or depressed by remembering that it’s not real, no harm, no foul. But social media is not a forced march. You can choose not to use it. You can check in occasionally to see what friends and family are up to. There is not a thing in the world wrong with that. That Unicorn knows who she is and doesn’t need a post or quote or quiz to prove it.
It might seem like there are unicorns who have it all, especially celebrities and the super-rich. But too many of them aren’t actually unicorns. They’re more like robots, with someone else doing all their thinking while they live in a shell to keep people from getting too close to them. And their “perfect” lives are what we see on TV or in a magazine (or in their Instagram feed). We know nothing of their real lives, their real struggles. Sure, their struggles may be more glamorous than most of ours are. But very few of them have what you or I would consider a perfect life.
They
