“Ciro ran towards the door at the end of the hallway. The path was clear and straight and the door was wide open. But just as soon as he reached, the door slammed shut. No matter how hard he tried he couldn’t get it open. Just when he thought all hope was lost, he saw a sliver of light off to the right. It seemed that another path had opened.”
“You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.”
~ Steve Jobs
It’s quite easy, isn’t it, to look back and connect the dots. But what about the current moment itself? Isn’t it a dot in our future? How do you trust that the dot will connect sometime in the future? In particular, how do you trust that what you lost today will be made up for tomorrow?
I guess that is the greatest irony of life: that it is not a straight path. It is a path that zigs and zags uniquely crafted for our unique set of experiences, born of the choices we make.
Take heart in the fact that all of life is an adventure and it is the greatest adventure we will ever have. While the things we fight for, the things we cry for, the things we get and the things we lose may seem very important in the moment, in the grand scheme of things, it is another dot leading us to build something most amazing.
In the face of loss, disappointment, or change, it is easy to feel like we have taken a wrong turn or lost something irreplaceable. But these moments, painful as they are, often give us chances for growth, pushing us to explore new paths and discover strengths we did not know we had. They are the moments that test us and shape our character.
Trusting the process requires a certain kind of courage, a willingness to step into the unknown without all the answers. It is about accepting that we won’t always understand the significance of each moment as it happens, but having faith that, in time, the meaning will become clear. This faith is not blind optimism, but it is a recognition that life, in all its complexity, has a way of unfolding in ways we might never have imagined.
What fun would it be if it were all so simple, eh?! Where would we be at if all our lives played out linearly?
Until the next owl delivery,
Zig Zagging,
Gaurav G.