Daily Gratitude: “You often meet your fate on the road you take to avoid it.”

I stopped in my tracks when I read this. Why? Because it so true.

As I am in the latter part of my 7th decade (7 is my lucky number thanks to Mickey Mantle), it has finally dawned on me that we really have very little (and probably no) control over what happens in our lives.

This quote reinforces that idea. It’s as if we are this tiny human being, standing behind a ship’s wheel, trying to steer this massive hunk of steel in another direction. Remember the Titanic? Oh, and the iceberg? Same thing.

I believe there is a destination that we have and we can choose that. Where we end up may or may not be that place. It depends on whether we’re able to be exact and consistent in our desires (like the olympians who start visualizing standing on the podium (at the Olympics – remember “specific”) from the time they were little. Too often we’re not specific enough or we vacillate too much.

The other possibility is that we end up where we want but the road we take is not the one we planned. I think that’s a lot of what this quote is about. We just need to have faith that the universe
• Has heard your desire
• Knows much more than you do
• Has figured out the best way for you to get there even if it’s not how you planned

I’ve bored you with the story about my wanting to be a doctor before but here’s the basic takeaways:
• I KNEW what I wanted (because God had told me so as hokey as that sounds)
• I “kind of” knew the path I should take – you know – high school, college, medical school
• But I didn’t visualize any of that specifically “because” i didn’t know any better
• There were detours which I thought were the end of the world (got rejected, got epilepsy, got rejected, I was immature, discovered osteopathy)
• Each of these detours served a vital purpose in the trajectory of my life and career. In other words they weren’t really detours. I had labeled them as such because I didn’t know any better. I didn’t have faith (then) that each of those supposed detours had a definite purpose.
• I lost faith in God and everything. But when my faith became restored, it had become a fortress, not the flimsy hut that had been easily blown down by a huff and a puff.

The important thing to remember is that there is a force, a power, that is stronger and smarter than you. You don’t have to control everything and as soon as you let go of that need to control, the quicker the ultimate good will come to you.