The Other Shoe

Our beliefs shape our experience of living. What we believe to be true, about the world and ourselves, colors our perceptions. We see what we believe.
For example, when something “bad” happens, we may think that more bad will happen. Specifically, if we have a negative start to our day, that means that the whole day will be bad. We may spend our day “waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
Here is the story behind that expression, by the way:
A man comes in late at night to a lodging house, rather the worse for wear. He sits on his bed, drags one shoe off and drops it on the floor. Guiltily remembering everyone around him trying to sleep, he takes the other one off much more carefully and quietly puts in on the floor. He then finishes undressing and gets into bed. Just as he is drifting off to sleep, a shout comes from the man in the room below: “Well, drop the other one then! I can’t sleep, waiting for you to drop the other shoe!”.
In a larger context, a belief in a future event or circumstance can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, considering the Law of Intention. If we expect negative or injurious things to happen, we can even draw these things to our lives. Fortunately (depending on how you look at it), most of us don’t have our mental energies organized enough to always bring this about. We scatter our thoughts among hope and worry, and that serves to keep a lot of the bad stuff away. This is not to say we ought to judge or blame ourselves for what happens, although it is a suggestion that we see it all as a learning experience.
Beliefs can be powerful tools for keeping our lives organized and predictable. But it pays to be attentive to those points at which our beliefs do not serve us, and can even be limiting us.
While we wait for the other shoe to drop, we can at least focus on what we believe the consequences of a fallen shoe might be, and prepare ourselves for the gift of experience that our beliefs are giving us.