“If we can recognize that change and uncertainty are basic principles, we can greet the future and the transformation we are undergoing with the understanding that we do not know enough to be pessimistic.”  Hazel Henderson

Standing beside a dark swamp as the sun was descending, the air was cool, and in the distance, I saw a small, one story, ranch house on the other side. Its outline was barely visible, but its indoor lights gazed back at me and I yearned for the safety I felt I might find inside its warm, yet unknown, interior.

Feeling alone, frightened and frankly, scared to pieces, with no place to spend the long night ahead, I watched the darkness descend and stared at the grey trees growing out of the swamp.  Each was missing its leafy top and all were standing like oversized toothpicks mired in the murky waters. Amidst the unnerving quietness, I heard a loud ripple and realized a creature was swimming rapidly across the waters straight towards me.

I was terrified as I watched the alligator barreling at me. Even as I tried to run, I found that my feet had become like heavy stone statues, immobile at the water’s side. No sound emerged as I tried desperately to scream.

Then it was at my feet.

I tried to make sense of it as I stared. Relief washing over me, I realized it was not an alligator. It was a manatee! In my dream, as he watched me, he jumped from the water and rolled and played and sent love across the space between us.  My horrible fear had emerged into one of nature’s most lovable creatures!

When I had this dream twelve years ago, I was in the midst of thirty months of the most trying and stressful time of my life – divorce, illness, job woes and a very threatened financial situation, all at once.  Finally understanding finally that security and safety were illusions that I had created in my own mind, I learned I would have to find a way to survive.

To do that, I had to embrace, as the Sufis coined, my Divine Inheritance – the gift (in my case) of unwelcomed pain that helped me to become stronger, more compassionate, more accepting, more loving and even a tiny bit more enlightened about life.

I was forced to step up to the plate like the Cowardly Lion who became courageous when Dorothy’s life hung in the balance.

All these years later, I am grateful for that experience. Even when I felt I would never find joy and happiness again, I was swiftly moving toward some of the best years of my life.

Change is always happening because that is what life is. These days I celebrate the good times with more gusto and I try harder to squash fear during the tough times.  As  Ms. Henderson said, we simply do not know enough about our future to be pessimistic.

Once I read that if we were born just one hour earlier or later, our whole lives would be different than they are today. Hmmm….maybe that one hour would have made a difference.  However, I do believe, many everyday choices have ramifications that alter our lives forever.

At the crossroads, we look one way and then the other, shift from foot to foot, ruminate about which way to go – marriage, committing to a life partner, divorce, which college to attend or whether to go at all,  jobs, big moves, whether to have children.  We debate, ask advise, lose sleep, make lists of pros and cons, fretfully strain to to see as far down the dark road as we can in order to make the best decisions. And occasionally, we even energetically and enthusiastically embrace a decision feeling certain that our choice will transform and shape our lives for the better.

Then there are those times that we are thrust unwittingly and unnervingly where we do not want to be.  At a routine physical checkup, the physician frowns and orders some extra tests.  A boss informs us the company is downsizing and our position, regrettably, will be one of the first to go.  A spouse or partner announces he has found a new love.

But in the end, all that happens is simply part of the the great mystery.  We cannot  know how choices we make and things that are thrust upon us will manifest in the story of our lives.

What happens involves decades of past events, people who have come before us,  where we were born, what we were taught as children, what we learned as we grew older and begin to form beliefs of our own.  We are woven together in surprising ways that intersect the most unlikely of us and produce the most unimagined events.  If we trace back to crossroads (wanted and unwanted), friends we have, choices we have made, we can get the only the slightest idea of how we managed to find ourselves where we are today. (Just as an aside – at your next dinner party, think for a moment how all those people ended up your table and where they grew up and where they came from and how you all managed to be sharing a meal together.)

Sometimes we fantasize about what if…I had gone to a different college…took that other job…studied harder…not met that man…not had that car accident…Things would be different.  Yes, different, but probably not in the way we might think or hope.

The Bhagavad Gita, that ancient Hindu text, reminds us to act well without attachment to the fruit of our actions.  To make the best decisions we can at the time and then let go.  What will be will be.

Helen Keller talked about this, too.  “Security is mostly a superstition,” she stated flatly.  “It does not exist in nature nor do children as a whole experience it.  Avoiding danger is not safer in the long run than outright exposure.  Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”

In the end, I believe we have to embrace an unconditional “yes” to life.  One of the first purchases my husband and I made together is a wrought iron piece of art that says simply, “Yes.”  It reminds us that yes really is our only choice.  It calls us to embrace life on life’s terms.  To make the best decisions we can at the time we make them. To react the best way we know how.  But to know we do not control the consequences of our decisions or actions.