My wife and I were recently engaged in creating a mind map. It’s an ongoing effort to help us to understand better what significant life events until now have been leading us towards. As such, it’s a constant work-in-progress.
But this mind map really illustrates the idea that there are no accidents in life. Our lives are not a random collection of happenstance, or in the words of The Bard, “…a tale told by an idiot, full of sound an fury, signifying nothing.” Quite the contrary, as we look over this map, we can see time and again a working pattern, ordered by an intelligence far greater than our own.
The mind map exercise helps us to more clearly see how the seemingly disconnected events, relationships, and ideas that appear to spin in space on their own have an order and a direction to them that is simply… elegant. While our past should never be the thing that defines us, it is what got us here, and so cannot be ignored. Likewise, our relationships, events, and ideas are not the sum total of us- but they are what will lead us forth from here.
So what happens when we start to view the world this way? Suddenly, every event is a gift- an opportunity to unwrap a bit more of “what’s next.” Every relationship is important. And nothing is wasted. What happens when we decide to experience the random and trivial events (or the random and trivial people) in this higher light? They become much less trivial.
Leave a Reply