“There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.”
R. Buckminster Fuller
Life naturally comes in waves.
Days come and go.
Moments of happiness come and go.
Pain — and his close friends fear, failure and struggle — strike our shore unannounced, and wash away the castles we build on our expectations and perspectives we want from life.
In hindsight, we could see them coming from miles out, but we didn’t know what we were looking at.
Knowing that life moves in waves highlight an interesting question:
Is the unexpected really unexpected?
The unexpected is not just probable, it’s inevitable. I don’t mean to say that negative outcomes are always inevitable, or those positive outcomes are assured. The best answer I can come up with for the question “will this be good or bad for me?” is “yes”. Positive outcomes don’t always mean good, nor does negative outcomes mean bad. Which, is a confusing way to say that everything that happens to us can be a lesson we can use (if we can take a breath and see it that way) and that luck has a hand in our successes as much as we do.
It’s good to remember that brilliant people older than us were once the teenagers and that we’re all figuring life out as we go, using the knowledge and tools (or lack thereof) we have to work with.
At any given moment, we are working with limited knowledge. It’s beneficial (downright vital) to know yourself, as well as surround yourself with wise advisors who have walked the walk and been where you’ve been. The more we know about ourselves and what we want in life, and the more we surround ourselves with friends, books (resources), advisors and mentors who want to see us thrive, the better we will be able to handle the unexpected.
So when the happy waves come, we’ll be ready to take advantage of them.
And when the struggle waves hit, we’ll be ready to take advantage of them too.
STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner
Daily Blog #649
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