“Remember, there are no mistakes, no coincidences.
Everything that occurs, everything around us
is a blessing given to us.
These blessings are lessons from which we must learn.”
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
“But when are we going to learn?”
A question asked by a dear friend,
someone I knew in another life, too,
a member of my soul family
and someone who’s had his share of serious heartbreak.
Ah, that’s the question.
Sometimes getting the lesson
takes a really, really long time.
Same can be true of the blessings.
Many of us don’t recognize the blessings, the gifts, the message,
not the first time. Or even the second.
But if we look back, we just might notice
the points in our life
when a door appeared before us.
Maybe we opened it
or maybe we didn’t pay attention.
How many doors have appeared in your life?
In my early 20s, when M. and I were married the first time,
I discovered by accident (ha!) that I wanted to teach college.
During my very first semester in grad school
a professor took sabbatical, leaving no one to teach
his popular 300-student mass enrollment class.
So they gave that class to me.
That’s right: I’d never taught or even done any public speaking,
and one fall, I found myself standing in front of 300 freshmen.
I loved it. But — I wouldn’t have thought I was an intuitive choice. How did this happen? Good question.
Then, after my Master’s
I left my PhD program without finishing
and entered the business world.
There I stayed for my entire career.
Fast forward 30 years: out of nowhere I became a finalist for a tenured teaching job in California. I was definitely a dark horse candidate,
so being on the short list got my attention. How did that happen?
That job wasn’t a good fit for me, though.
Another year went by and
an opportunity to teach college
in Florida unexpectedly came my way. Let’s just say a door appeared, I opened it and walked into three years of teaching part-time.
I loved it.
A few years later, M and I remarried
and decided to return to California. My college offered me a year-long, fulltime faculty contract. But we were moving and I turned it down.
I figured I’d look for an adjunct teaching job in California, eventually.
And then, in the way the Universe has
of making sure you’re doing what you are supposed to be doing,
I found myself well-positioned for another teaching job.
If I track back to how that happened, it really is amazing.
I was in a writing workshop with a man
who became chancellor of a college a few months after we met
and sent me to the chair of his general studies department
who sent me to the chair of the new program in entrepreneurship
who, a few months later, asked if I would teach.
The complexity of that chain is overwhelming.
Walking through the halls of my new college last month
I was overcome with the knowledge that
I was doing what I was always meant to do.
Maybe I ignored the first message.
And maybe some of the others.
But the Universe kept serving me up
opportunity after opportunity
seemingly out of nowhere,
until I finally understood.
I stood in my classroom the other day
waiting for students to arrive
and heard a deep voice in my head say,
“Took you long enough!” I laughed.
Here’s the lesson:
Pay attention.
When a door opens in front of you, open it
and most important,
walk through it.
There are no coincidences.
Everything in life unfolds as it is supposed to.
Everything.
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