Looking back at some of the issues I have written about so far, I have started noticing a pattern.
A problem appears and, at times, the situation feels uncertain, difficult, or even unfair. I try to reason through it, understand what is happening, worry about the possible outcomes, and search for a way forward. Often, I still cannot see one.
Eventually, I reach the boundary of my control. I realise that there are things I can do, and a large part of the situation that I simply cannot control.
But I do not quit. I focus on the positive decisions still available to me. I continue studying, working, applying, researching, building, moving, or simply carrying on.
Then, somewhere along the way, something happens. Circumstances change, often in a way I could not have planned or even imagined when the problem first appeared.
Does Everything Happen for a Reason?
It would be easy to look back at these experiences and conclude that everything happens for a reason. But I am not sure that is something I can prove.
Perhaps something more useful is emerging from these experiences: you do not need to know how the whole journey will unfold before taking the next reasonable step.
A person starting from a village does not necessarily see the entire chain connecting where he is standing to becoming a GISc Professional, researcher, writer, or whatever comes afterwards. Only much later do the pieces begin to look like a path.
The trick may simply be not to give up. Resolve one issue at a time, make the decisions that are available to you, and keep moving.
What I Am Learning
If there is a philosophical takeaway from what I have posted so far, for me it is this:
Uncertainty is not necessarily evidence that there is no path ahead. I may simply be standing at a point from which the next part of the path cannot yet be seen.
My responsibility, therefore, is not to control the whole outcome, but to act responsibly on what is within my reach and allow the rest to unfold.
This does not mean that this way of thinking will solve every problem. Nor does a good outcome prove that everything was destined to happen.
Interestingly, someone who had been reading the blog recently summarised their takeaway as:
“Do what is within your control and let the unknown unfold.”
They went further and said:
“This will be one of the rules I live by.”
Perhaps that captures the philosophy better than saying that everything happens for a reason. I do not have to know what lies around the corner. I just have to deal responsibly with what is in front of me and keep going.
And if this pattern has not been apparent in the stories I have shared so far, then perhaps keep it in mind as you read the ones that are still to come. Consider it a simple schema: a problem arises, the way forward is unclear, I eventually identify what is within my control and act on it, and then I allow circumstances beyond my control to unfold. The interesting question is what happens next.
Join the conversation
When you look back at difficult periods in your own life, do you think things happened for a reason, or did the path only become visible after you kept moving?
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