I’m back in Oklahoma this weekend, visiting family and celebrating my wife’s completion of grad school. We drove here, yep, the twenty or so hours it takes to traverse from the west coast to America’s crossroads, Oklahoma City. Driving afforded us a chance to move part of our belongings, then leave one of our cars halfway to North Carolina.
There’s something about driving and the conversational openings. Desert, mountains, woods, or prairie, it’s no matter; the changing scenery toils the mind’s unconscious. I love driving for this reason. Given everything the last year provided in rolling change and uncertainty, we had no shortage of explorations and reflections. I will not bore you with the randomness of our conversation, but only to share one insight:
We have no idea what our life is going to look like, even a year in the future.
One year ago, I was committed to practicing medicine, in the interim at least. We were committed to staying in California for at least two years. Here we are, now, moving to North Carolina and I’m figuring out what’s next in life. And I now own a tattoo, the story of which I outlined in Thursday’s What I Must Never Forget. All of those outcomes were improbable and borderline impossible one year ago.
Yet, Anything can happen if we stay present in the uncertainty.
Over the past year, I didn’t do this well, many times closing up and shutting off possibility; I fought like hell to preserve things as they were. Other times, I accepted and surrendered. Life has a great teacher when I work to let go what I cannot control.
So, as we enjoy another graduation season and the subsequent change, let’s trust our plans and keep open the idea that perhaps, just maybe, everything that’s happening will lead us where we need to be. Eventually. Somehow.
To living a life we love,
Ryan Fightmaster, MD
