When Life Doesn’t Work Out the Way You Wanted, Remember This
Life lessons to remember for tough times
We start out life so hopeful. No matter how bad it might have been growing up, we’re sure things will only get better. But life unfolds in ways we never expect. We begin to figure out that our careful plans are sometimes no more than wishes on dandelions that life blows away with a sudden changing wind.
It can seem so incredibly arbitrary. I look back at my life and see how the smallest, most insignificant of choices led to a series of events that shaped my life in one direction rather than another. I could never anticipate the outcome. I still can’t.
Sometimes, I think about the nursery rhyme, The House that Jack Built. It works in layers — how one choice impacts the rest. Everything is circular and connected. So, all those things that seemed arbitrary, maybe they were…and maybe they weren’t.
Forget philosophy, theology, fate, or predestination. Instead, it helps me to remember that where one thing didn’t work out, something else did. It wasn’t always a better something. That depended entirely on my choices. But some of the things that came into my life were better than anything I had wished for myself.
