When my daughter was 12 days old, I was having lunch with a friend near our apartment. My wife, Michelle, called me and very matter-of-factly said, "Something is wrong."
I left the restaurant immediately and ran home. It was a frigid Boston February day. As I entered our apartment, I saw our daughter sitting in her seat, almost motionless. She was breathing, but not much more than that. I instinctively took off her onesie and placed my freezing cold hands on her tiny 6-pound body, trying to elicit a response, but got none.
My wife and I looked at each other and I said, calmly, "I guess we have to go to the hospital."
In hindsight, I don't know why we didn't call an ambulance. But in that moment, I knew there was no time for crying, only the mission: run and fetch the car while Michelle grabbed the baby, and speed to the hospital.
On our way to Boston Children's Hospital, I said to Michelle, "I hope we don't have to wait long." But when we got there and told the triage nurse what was happening, she didn't tell us to have a seat. She grabbed the baby like a football, ran to a treatment room, and immediately started poking and prodding that tiny body.
I lost it and started sobbing uncontrollably. Michelle, who had been crying in the car, was now quite put together.
Several minutes into my sobbing, watching the nurses and doctors attend to the baby, something shifted. Without any effort whatsoever, a new thought came to me: If you have a sick child, being in the emergency room of the best children's hospital in the world is probably the best place to be. And then another: Of all the sick children in this hospital, your baby is probably one of the healthiest.
In my uncontrollable sobbing, these thoughts just showed up. And as they did, my entire mood shifted. I stopped crying. My shoulders relaxed. I felt at peace.
I didn't try to "see the silver lining." I wasn't practicing gratitude or trying to think positively. Nothing on the outside had changed—we still had no idea what was wrong with our baby, or even if she would be okay. Yet, the internal feeling had completely changed.
In that moment, I realized we are never actually feeling our circumstances; we are just feeling our thinking in the moment. And thinking isn't something we do. It’s something that comes to us.
Within a few hours, it was determined she was just malnourished from insufficient milk production. With a bit of care and feeding, she’d be fine. Over the next three days in the hospital, the thoughts kept coming. I had thoughts of how lucky we were, and thoughts of guilt and shame for not recognizing the problem sooner. And as the thoughts showed up—without warning, on repeat—there was a corresponding feeling. From peace and levity to absolute despair.
Now, when I feel sad, insecure, or angry, and it looks like that feeling is coming from a terrible circumstance, I usually know what's really going on. There is nothing to do except wait for a better thought to show up. And it always does, on its own.