“Our destiny is defined by how we deal with the chance elements in our life.” – Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump.
Forrest Gump is holding a feather he discovers floating through the wind. This feather symbolizes destiny and “blind” luck. At one point in the movie, Forrest says, “I don’t know if we each have a destiny – or if we’re all just floatin’ around accidental-like on a breeze. But I, I think maybe it’s both.”
I view this is a testament to how truly magical life can be, but after receiving an email from an old friend who expressed her concern for my mental sanity and “living in the unknown,” I thought to clarify this phenomenon and it’s wondrous effects. Perhaps I can explain how and why it works.
Have you ever noticed what happens about a week before you go on vacation? Things might get hairy before you go because you want to tie up all the loose ends, all the “what if’s.” You want to make sure things are in place and that your bases are covered. But if you’re anything less than type A, you’ll start relax a few days before vacation.
In those few days, work might come in, but you’re already on vaca mode. You could truly care less. You’re thinking to yourself “Who gives a flyin $@$!~… I’m vacation!” and you start to let go. Reflect back and notice what happens when you go away, when you relax, when you let go.
While on vacation, or even before, you suddenly meet people you really vibe with, you might even meet a romantic interest if you’re single. You haven’t had sex all year, but now you’re on vacation for a week and you’re having lots of it. Things happen that normally wouldn’t because you don’t have a 9-5 schedule or have “to do” anything. You’re just doing whatever you feel like. You connect with people “serendipitously” and life becomes somewhat magical those few weeks. You have tons of fun, more than you’ve had all year and you attribute it to being on vacation, not because life could actually be like that 52 weeks a year. Coming back, you check your voicemail and wa-lah! You have the business deals you’ve been working on. The person you’ve been waiting to call you calls. All of a sudden, all the work you’ve been working so hard on comes to you, all during the time you’ve been gone. While you’ve been doing absolutely nothing but having fun.
You might notice this too when you move or fully let go of a past lover. 3 days before you leave a city, you get an unexpected job offer. After years of missing your ex, you meet someone totally awesome and then boom – your ex calls out of nowhere. Something out of the ordinary happens when you let go. It might seem like weird and inconvenient timing, but it’s not. It is your energy and your energetic shift of letting go. Because of this, you might have taken some risks you normally wouldn’t. You thought yourself, “whatever happens, happens.” You stopped caring about the consequences.
This is the magic of letting go into the unknown, of not having a plan. Being carefree. We live inside schedule & routine and we lose touch with the magic of flow and life. We beat ourselves up when we don’t do enough and in fact doing too much is the problem. Most people have a goal and are not only attached to the results, but also attached to the way it needs to happen. That’s the problem.
The universe creates more powerfully than we can as an individual. If you have a goal or intention, hold it with just the right amount of energy – not so tightly that you suffocate it with your own energy and expectations, and not too loosely that it falls apart. Give it a boundary, an energetic space. Most importantly don’t attach yourself to the results. Do the opposite, detach yourself from what you want to create. Trust. Wait and pay attention, like you would if you were fishing. You wait for the hits, the little bobble to tip underneath the water- the signs that will lead you to the next step. Being present opens you to a receiving state where you can see the signs that will guide you to your goal. But if you’re not living in the moment, you’ll miss it. These things happen when you are relaxed, open, and willing to enter the unknown.
And it helps tremendously if you enjoy the process of bee-ing led. If you create with the energy of positivity, love and joy, you raise the energetic feeling of what it is that you want to create and it becomes a magnet. Love always attracts. Fear detracts.
This is the power of living in the unkNOWn while doing what you most LOVE. You’ll notice flow and synchronicity, finding yourself at the right time and right place. Pay attention and look for the floating feathers in your life. They are everywhere. It doesn’t just happen in the movies!!!
