You Have Beaten the Odds

You Have Beaten the Odds DiceYou have beaten the odds.  The odds were against you ever seeing this article.  The chain of events which led you to this moment right now is long and complicated.  The path that led you here could have easily veered off in another direction.  And perhaps this moment right now is one which will be truly valuable and life-transforming.

Or perhaps your life will continue on, seemingly without anything of significance occurring, however, if we look closer we see that nothing could be further from the truth.  Minor decisions can completely alter the direction of your life.  Small events can lead you down a completely new path.  Tiny tweaks can lead to big changes.  And events unfolding right now may impact you more than you’d ever imagine.

My wife is one of the great joys of my life and tracing back the events that led to our meeting, it seems near impossible that we ever met.  My wife is from a small coastal city in the Philippines.  I am from Iowa.  I met my wife ten years ago while living in Nanjing, China.

My wife was a professional singer and came to a restaurant/bar for an audition to replace the current singer who had to return home.  My wife was offered that audition because she accidentally met the man who would become her agent (mistaking him for someone else).  She came to China as a singer when she just happened to be at the right place at the right time when her father’s friend mentioned a band in China needed a singer.

I was at the restaurant/bar the same night she came for an audition.  I would not have been there had not the band’s keyboardist introduced himself to me a previous night.  This was the beginning of a friendship which was the sole reason I returned to that restaurant/bar.  The night he introduced himself, I was telling myself there was no point for me to ever return to that bar.  I would never have gone to this bar in the first place had my employer at the time not insisted on taking me there one evening.  I never would have come to China had my college professor not introduced this possibility to me.  I would not have met this professor if my fraternity brother had not recommended I take his class.  I would not have met my fraternity brother if my sister had not told me to go to that particular fraternity and inquire about her first boyfriend, who was a member.  My sister never would have met her boyfriend, had she not travelled one particular weekend to Denver.

You Have Beaten the OddsIf my wife had not been at the right place at the right time and my sister had never gone to Denver, the stream of events which led to our meeting very easily could never have been.  In fact any number of things could have gone wrong along the way.

It all seems so fragile and unfathonable that my wife and I ever found each other.  Is it fate?  Was it destined?  Perhaps.  I don’t know for certain.  But I do know that I am extremely grateful for everything that so beautifully unfolded the way it did.  When I think about this chain of events and all of the obstacles which could have derailed it, I am in awe.

Life is made up of an infinite number of small decisions, yet these small decisions result in vastly different results.  Who you are today is the product of innumerable occurances.  If you take the time, surely you will discover a story like the one above.  And, while you will probably discover a few, there are so many more that we will never know about.

You get the urge to stop for a cup of coffee and you meet someone who transforms your life.  You drop something on the ground and notice a pamphlet about learning a skill which ends up bringing you a new career.  You call into work sick the day there is a tragedy at the office.

In a future article I will talk about how your gut/inner voice/instinct may be guiding you on a wiser path than your logical brain may be taking you on.  It seems that your inner voice knows something that your brain does not.

The Journey WithinThings happen and everything is changed.  Everything you do has a ripple effect, potentially an enormous one.  You are a butterfly and every decision in your life contains a possible butterfly effect.  As is everyone else.  The interconnectedness of life is truly astonishing.  You create massive change without even trying, without even realizing.  If that’s not amazing, I don’t know what is.

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