You Can't Connect the Dots Looking Forward

I encountered a bit of synchronicity this week. To me, Synchronicity is like breadcrumbs from life. We stumble upon them in the dark forest of self doubt. They lead us as if we were lost children back into the fullness of what we are. They lead us home...and let's face it...most of us are more homesick than what we like to admit.

We might not recognize it as homesickness. Maybe we call it anxiety, or depression, or "lost." What I have come to believe however is that we are not yearning for a specific place, rather we are aching to remember who it is we were meant to become.

A young man came into my office the other day struggling with identifying his sense of purpose. Why was he at university? What was this experience going to do for him? What should he major in? Which direction should he go?

His grades were suffering. He was feeling that he was in a hole without the tools to climb out.

Purpose is important. If you have ever followed a workout plan or made a commitment to change your life in a big way you understand this. Having a strong sense of purpose serves as a motivator. We can get through the tedious 6am runs if we know we are in training for something larger. We can commit to lifting heavier weights if we can see that developing muscle is going to help us perform better. We can put in hours of study if we have a clear plan in mind about gaining entrance into graduate school or other competitive program.

When we can't see the purpose, it is very difficult to do things that are unpleasant or stay motivated to engage fully with life. How can we put ourselves in training if we don't know what we are training for?

Being without clear purpose is difficult and most of us will experience this difficulty in more than one way on a fairly frequent basis. We're hungry for something but we don't know what.

Fortunately, experiencing a crisis or floundering like this can be the best thing that ever happened to us.

What did I say to the student?

Find classes you enjoy. Experiment with what you don't know. Right now your experience at school is opening more doors for you...you just don't know what they are yet. Don't force yourself to choose a specific path your first year. Don't fret over it if you decide you'd rather do something different than what you initially chose. Your life will change...that is inevitable. You can't know yet how the experiences that you are having right now are going to affect you 10 years from now.

Our job right now is to keep doors open...not burn bridges. We need to be doing things that broaden our options and stay away from making choices that could slam doors in our face before we even knew we wanted to go through them. Our job right now is to engage in things we love that will ultimately give us more options in the future. Our job is to notice what we like and pay attention to synchronicity.

You will know you are on the right path if you can connect to a sense of excited curiosity. Although you might not see the map, you will know when you fall off the road.

Later that night my beautiful husband was all excited about a youtube video he had run across. It was a video of Steve Jobs (Founder of Apple) giving the commencement speech at Stanford.

I had come home to a very disorganized flurry of an apartment. External organization is necessary for me first before I can focus myself internally so I wasn't really paying attention to him. I was getting down to the business of picking up after my love's whirlwind of a life. My husband has a lot of fantastic qualities...I'm working not to sweat the small stuff.

I made a comment about not being able to sit down and watch the clip with him because I was busy trying to get organized so I could relax. He was a bit let down and said, "Well... just listen to it then. I think you'll really like this."

While wiping down counters and unloading the dishwasher I heard Steve Jobs talk about his college experience. He had dropped out but continued to "drop in" on random classes for another 18 months. The things he learned when he just selected what he was curious about ultimately lead to the uniqueness of Apple.

He talked about connecting the dots. Looking back on his life he was able to see quite clearly how one experience opened a door to another. He made an excellent point however that related back to the conversation I had with the student in my office.

"You can't connect the dots looking forward."

Tomorrow my husband and I leave to attend a conference in Wisconsin about "Vocational Discernment." How can we help students to identify a sense of call? The synchronicity in my life yesterday gave me some good clues. It was a synchronicity that I might have missed however if I had been more irritated about cleaning up the apartment.

You can't connect the dots looking forward.

I've got my eyes open for the next breadcrumb.


Steve Jobs Commencement Speech 2005