A reason for everything

A dear woman I once knew would often say, "Everything happens for a reason".  Her daughter repeated those words to me once when I was least receptive to it.  I had walked out to my beat up van to go to work.  It was a difficult time.  After many years of media experience and education behind me, I was only finding part time work in my field.  Ready to go to that job, I found a flat tire on the old van.  I kicked the tire, walked back in the house and fought tears.

"Everything happens for a reason," she said.  I had just enough time to express my true thoughts, when the phone rang.  It was an offer for the job I was hoping to find.

Often things just don't happen as quickly as we believe they should and not in the way we believe they should.  Then once we get to the other side, we see an amazing series of events that came together to create this new thing.  The difficult parts created appreciation.  The things we believed were side paths actually brought some important understanding that we needed in order to obtain a better outcome now.  Of course, there are other paths we take that we can clearly see kept us from obtaining our objectives sooner.

Generally, I believe it's the times I try to force an outcome that turn out to be source of mistakes.  There's much to be said for taking a slower pace and seeking patience.  But it is all a balance.  The turtle only wins the race if he keeps moving forward.