Читать книгу How Did I Get Here?: Navigating the unexpected turns in love and life - Barbara Angelis De - Страница 17

Sometimes turning points can be quiet, almost invisible, and therefore, hard to predict and easy to miss. They sneak up on us day by day without our even realizing they have arrived, so that when we come face to face with them, at first they don’t look like turning points at all. Perhaps we simply feel bored, restless, somehow unsettled within ourselves. We may feel sad for no reason, even depressed, and seem to have lost our passion for love, for sex, for work, for living. Something is not right, but we aren’t sure what it is. If someone asked us, “Are you at a turning point in your life?” we’d probably answer, “No, I’m just overworked,” or “No, I’m just worn out from having two toddlers at home with me.” We don’t even suspect that we might be at some important crossroads—we just don’t like how we are feeling.

What is happening here? By way of some underground pathways in our psyche, we have been going through a transition and reached a turning point without even knowing we were approaching it or that we have reached it at all. Deep within us, something has been shifting so slowly that it has been virtually imperceptible. As we will see later in this book, we are often so skilled at ignoring what has been happening inside us, especially if we feel that it threatens our known reality, that we don’t even recognize we’ve come to a cosmic intersection in our life even when we’re standing right in the middle of it.

My friend Pamela just went through this kind of turning point. Pamela owned a children’s clothing store, and for months I’d been hearing her complain about myriad situations in her life: her employees were driving her crazy; remodeling of the store was taking longer than she’d anticipated; her nine-year-old son was doing poorly in school, and she was having trouble helping him as much as she wanted due to her busy schedule; and she was too stressed to think about dating, even though it had been five years since her divorce.

Late one evening Pamela called me and, as usual, began telling me about how horrible her day had been. “I just don’t know what to do,” she lamented. “Why do things have to be this hard?”

“Maybe the Universe is trying to tell you something,” I suggested.

“Like what—that my life sucks?” she responded with a sarcastic laugh.

“No, like that maybe you’re at an important crossroads. You haven’t enjoyed the store for some time now—it’s doing well financially, but it’s a burden rather than the creative challenge it was when you first opened. You have no time for your son, and no time for yourself. Perhaps you’re supposed to be making a change.”

Pamela was silent for a moment. Then, in a very calm voice, she replied, “Like selling my business.”

“Have you thought about it?”

“To tell you the truth, I actually haven’t. But as I hear you describe it, suddenly the pieces are fitting together. Everything in my life is screaming ‘SELL!’—I just haven’t been listening. I worked so hard to make the store successful, and couldn’t ever imagine I wouldn’t want to be doing this.”

“It is financially successful,” I reassured her. “But if you don’t want to be doing what you are doing every day, then you’re not succeeding on the inside.”

“And that’s why I have been so miserable,” Pamela admitted.

Soon after our phone call, my friend sold her business, took two months off to spend more time with her son and reevaluate her life, and in a burst of inspiration decided to start a new company specializing in remodeling and decorating children’s rooms. Pamela runs the business out of her house and is happier than she’s ever been. She’s even dating a furniture designer she met working on one of her new projects.

Like Pamela, we become so attached to the road we are on, to the itinerary we have mapped out, that when a new road appears we may not even see it. Often in these circumstances, it does take someone else—a family member, a friend, a therapist—to point out to us that we are indeed at some kind of crucial turning point.