Connecting the dots.
Remember that game that we all used to play when we were younger? The one with the random dots in space and you drew lines to connect them and then at the end, tada there was a shape or object. Well, as I close out my first semester of senior year and graduation day looms; I’ve been reminiscing on childhood more and more. I thought to myself, connect the dots could be an analogy for life and I said “I gotta write this one down”, and well, here we are.
We go through life in phases, with monumental (and not so monumental) moments and events passing us by every day. One day we’re born and then we walk and talk and then all of a sudden, we graduate high school, then college then we’re adults and we have families and jobs then we retire, and that’s life. But if we stop and think for a second about all of these events that are happening, we see that they all lead to one another. Because everything happens for a reason.
We can look at all of these moments as little dots that happen in the space of our life. At the time they may seem astray and random, we think to ourselves: why is this happening to me? Where is this going? What is the reason for this? Often times we don’t realize the reason until after we’ve moved on, I have an example. Freshman year of college I applied for internships for the following summer, unknowing that it was probably a bit too early for that. I was disappointed when I didn’t get anything and needed a job for that summer. One day my mom sent me the link to a new cycling studio that was opening one town over from my house. I emailed the owner and asked if she was hiring front desk staff for the summer, she said yes, and I interviewed the next week and got the job. This little job at this little cycling studio ended up changing my life. First of all, I still work there almost 3 years later, I run their social media, I found a passion for fitness, I met my best friend, and it’s opened doors for me that I never ever thought would come out of this front desk job.
I share this experience because getting that job the summer after my freshman year was a dot that happened to me in the course of my life and looking back, I’ve been able to connect the dots. If I never got the front desk job at the cycle studio, I wouldn’t have learned what I know now about owning a business, running social media accounts, marketing. I wouldn’t have found a love for beat-based cycling, I wouldn’t have met my favorite human, I wouldn’t have realized that I want to own my own business. Now as graduation nears this spring, I have found that I am so thankful for that front desk job.
Every dot happens for a reason. The good, the bad, and the ugly. That break-up that broke you, only led you to finding someone better. That friend that ditched you, only showed you that there are better friends out there. That job you didn’t get, only showed you that there are bigger and better things out there for you. The path we think we want, may not be what’s best for us. And sometimes, it just takes us a little while to connect the dots.
