There is a saying that difficult roads often lead to a beautiful location.
What the saying means, at least to me, is that times of struggle have the potential to teach us things that will benefit our lives and the lives of those around us.
It suggests that times of grief can take us to a new understanding of what it is to be human, with the result that we become wiser and more compassionate.
It infers that loss can open the door to deeper sharing, if not our material possessions, then our love and our care.
It is also a message of hope. You see, we can’t with any accuracy predict the outcome of our current situation. Thus, it might just be, that despite our fears, things will turn out okay.
And the saying encourages us to trust. To walk the path while being open to the experience and what it might reveal to us, believing that, in the end, all shall be well wherever the road ultimately leads us.
Kate’s New Location
Kate lived a well-planned existence. Growing up in a supportive family, she completed her schooling then went on to university, her studies leading her to a well-paid career.
Her life was going to schedule, until fate threw her a curve ball in the form of the global financial crisis. The company where she worked for five years went into closure and she couldn’t find another position in her field. A friend suggested that she take a job in a community agency that supported people in need. At first, she resisted the idea, then finally relented. She applied and was successful in gaining the position.
Surprisingly, Kate not only found that she had skills that were useful in this work, but that she was also learning new skills. Once she opened her mind to it, she discovered that, more than enjoying what she was doing, she loved it, despite the fact that she was earning much less money than she did in her former job.
You see, as she helped her clients improve their day to day lives, her life improved too and in a way she never expected. She found something deeper in herself, a way of living, giving and being that she never knew existed. She was in a land newly discovered.
Every Road Leads Somewhere…
Sometimes, what seems to us a disaster can have unexpected benefits. As George Bernard Shaw said, “After all, the wrong road always leads somewhere.”
That “somewhere” may at first seem to be in the totally wrong neighborhood, but we need to open our hearts and our minds to what might be good and even beautiful in this new locale.
Put another way, it is up to us to find the gold in each and every one of our experiences. And the gold is there if we dig deep enough.
