Humble Hollow

The other week as I was driving to my mom’s house, the woman in the car behind me was riding my bumper and swerving as though she was going to pass me. What she failed to see was that I was not driving slowly on purpose; there was a white work-van practically crawling in front of me. Once the van turned onto the opposite road, the woman zoomed past me, going at least 80 mph in a no-passing 35 mph zone. I sighed, trying my best to assume she was late for work or on her way to the hospital. A moment later I was laughing: after she passed me, she got stuck behind not one but TWO garbage trucks. So much for rushing. And so much for me being empathetic.

Have you ever had anything similar happen to you? You’re rushing around trying to get somewhere fast, but the universe seems to be working against you, placing obstacles in front of you at every turn? What if instead of becoming frustrated, you assume the universe is protecting you or nudging you in the right direction?

Consider the eerie stories of people who narrowly escaped being victims of 911. There are stories of people getting stuck in traffic, which prevented them from being at the world trade center during the attack. There were people who had meetings cancelled or who were running late to work…seemingly bad things that saved their lives. I heard a story of someone who turned down a job at a twin tower because they had broken up with the person they were moving to New York for. I heard another one of someone who worked in the tower, but their car broke down that morning.

Let’s think about other examples of fate’s intervention. I worked with a woman whose daughter was in a car accident…it was traumatic, but ended up saving her life. After the accident, the daughter had to be medically cleared, and while they were testing her, they discovered she had cancer. They were able to treat her and she is now cancer free, but if it hadn’t been for the accident, they may not have caught the disease in time.

The universe is constantly pulling strings to ensure you are going along your proper path. At times, fate’s interventions can seem cruel or inconvenient. And often, we won’t ever learn why something HAD to happen…we won’t see that getting pulled over by the police prevented us from getting into a terrible accident, or that by meeting “the one” later in life, you matured enough so that you could truly accept their love.

I’ll leave you with this thought:

To live a good life, we must have faith that the universe is truly good, and believe that every step of our journey is ultimately for our benefit.