Some of us are looking at a week of tranquility. Others are looking at a week closely resembling the apocalypse, Ragnarok, Le Fin--take your pick, it's the end of days. Either way, we've all got one thing in common with each other: we have no idea what in the great, whirling world we're doing.
And that's okay. The trick is to be at peace with uncertainty, because that's all any of us are ever going to get in life. Even when you think you do have an idea of what's going on, you can't control every facet of your life at once. Sometimes the world just seems to be flat-out working against us, and we find ourselves wondering, "What am I doing with my life? Where am I going to be in ten years? Is everything going to work out?"
The answer is yes, things will work out. Life doesn't always go according to plan, no--but that doesn't necessarily mean it goes wrong. Sometimes plans fail because there's a better path for you to take. Don't roll your eyes at me, negative-ninnies of the world. If you don't believe me, here's one example from my own life:
I spent a couple years trying to meet Neil Gaiman, one of my favorite authors. (Anyone who knows me has just sighed fondly and murmured, "Here we go again.") Every chance got shot down. The event was too far away, too expensive, badly timed, sold out.... I started to think I'd never meet him. Every failure depressed me.
Then, finally, an event came up that I could go to. I was ecstatic. Heck, I could write ten pages on it, but we'll keep it short. I was among the last to get to him at the signing part, but right when I got up to him, his pen ran out of ink and he had to refill it. Suddenly my mom and I got to have a whole conversation with him. I made him laugh, he took my hands, we hugged.... It was impossibly, gloriously awesome.
That was the event I was meant to go to. Not the others, even though I felt, every time they slipped by, that I had missed my opportunity. The truth was, those opportunities had to fail for me to get to the right one. So, now, when I face rejection in my writing, I tell myself, It just isn't the right time. My opportunity will come if I keep trying. You never know when an epic failure is actually a necessary first step for the best thing that ever happened to you. As Walt Disney once said:
"You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you."
Life is scary. We don't know what we're doing, where we're going, or sometimes if we're even going to survive. But we will survive. We'll face our challenges, our rejections, our heartbreaks, our occasional personal apocalypses. And then suddenly everything will work out, and we'll see why we had to go through all that in the first place. You don't have to know now; you'll figure it out later. Just breathe and enjoy the ride. When you hit a pothole, yell, "Weee!" and keep going. The next exit is smooth sailing.
