The Possibility of Multiple Radically Divergent Futures

I've spent much of my life trying to recover from the mythos of One True Destiny. 

It's such a powerful story.  If you find that one true person.  One true place.  One true profession.  One true passion. If you find it - everything else will fall into line.

Destiny.

Gradually as my life unfolded and I had the curious experience that:



1.) nothing was turning out like I thought it would in life, and...

2.) that was not actually disappointing instead I was *liking* the unexpected directions.

These two unlikely realities paired to helped me release a bit of my fierce hold on the idea of destiny, but life was not finished with this process.

In my forties I faced some of the darkest days of my life.  Almost every one of my worst fears came true.  All of the investments I had made in my life suddenly seemed to be bankrupt (and not financial investments, deeper more substantial investments - relationships, values, ideals, hopes, dreams).  I spent days and weeks and months in the deepest kind of sorrow because I was convinced that I had lost everything.

Truly, I had lost some very very substantial hopes and dreams.  Much of my faith (in so many things) had been undermined or upended.








And I was very surprised to find out that I had survived.  That I was still alive.  That I wanted to live.  That after the darkness subsided a bit I could imagine life in new ways.

This experience feels like it belongs to a category I call:  Gifts of Aging.

I was suddenly aware that not only was I NOT bound to a particular destiny, but I had the capacity to both love the life that I was living right now and the destination it seemed to predict AND ALSO imagine alternate possibilities. 

We go along thinking that our future is dependent upon this thing happening.

Or this thing NOT happening.

And then when it doesn't (or does).  We think that there is no future.

Today's thing that I value is The (ever-present) Possibility of Multiple Radically Divergent Futures. 

And while as a young person such a possibility seemed to signal all sorts of possible problems, now it is simply a resource of hope.

#50thingsofvalue