About 2 minutes
I have always believed things in life happen for a reason, and I maintain this mindset primarily for two reasons. One, there are too many variables in the world to truly have control over outcomes, and two, it is the easiest way to remain positive when things are not going well. If you share even a sliver of that thinking, have you ever wanted the ability to review a life event and be able to see the route things took to arrive there?
Think of it like checking out the code of life’s programming or debugging a string of nested Excel “If/Then” formulas. This may venture into butterfly effect territory, but I am not looking for something as complex as: when I was 13 I stepped on an ant, so in the next 30 years its relatives migrated with me across states to take up residence around the foundation of my new home, slowly removing the soil beneath so the the house sits at the slightest of angles but enough that it disrupts my sleep at night which undermines my ability to be sharp for an important job interview. That would be preposterous, right? No, what I am looking for is the ability to understand how something in my life ended up the way it did, to be able to tell how my actions and the actions of others influenced the outcome. Otherwise, how are we supposed to truly learn from our mistakes if the whole process cannot be laid bare?
My life to this point has been a mix of things that have gone well and horribly wrong, probably not too different from most. For the things that have gone well, where I have felt successful and rewarded for my efforts, I would not mind seeing how many of those positive outcomes are from what I influenced and how many are dumb luck or coincidence. If the percentage of luck is high, then I can at least adjust my expectations for what I can do and what I may get from my efforts. Then, for those negative events, I want to be able to see the pivot points, the cause and effect, that maybe turned the path from being something positive to its opposite. That is valuable information to help avoid or navigate future pitfalls. For example, in my current search for a new job, there have been multiple opportunities that fizzled due to bad timing outside my control or seemingly inexplicable decisions by others. Regardless, I am left with little more than being able to ask the cosmos, “Why? How?” The uncertainty is infinitely frustrating.
Being able to pull back the curtain on why life takes the direction it does is probably more power than any person should have. The gamble and mystique of an unknown future and an unanswerable past, however, are aspects of life that make each day its own adventure, even if it ends up being another milquetoast experience.
Featured Image: Shutterstock 766012597 (Created by: fran-kie)
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