Blood & Ink: When Things Don’t Work Out…

“Sometimes, what didn’t work out for you, really worked out for you…”

What a brilliant pattern interrupt. I stumbled across this the other day and fell in love with it.

In hindsight, sometimes it’s obvious—you didn’t get that job you wanted, and that was necessary because it led to the great opportunity that came after it.

The job not working out, really worked out because something better awaited you.

Sometimes it’s not so obvious—spilling your coffee that morning and changing your shirt made you five minutes late for your commute which let you avoid that head-on collision you were going to be in because another person ran the red light just a mere 5 minutes before you arrived at the intersection.

You never know.

I also love this because it’s palindromic… you can read it backwards to a similar effect:

“Sometimes, what worked out for you, really didn’t work out for you…”

It’s a devastating experience when you finally ‘get everything you wanted,’ only to realize… it wasn’t what you wanted at all.

You accomplished your goal only to realize the external achievement wasn’t enough to single-handedly sway the crippling self-image that was fueling your motivation in the first place.

Here’s a recent example: due to my failure to communicate, I didn’t renew the lease on my home in Costa Rica quickly enough, and the owners rented it out.

I learned this on January 2. Our lease ended January 15.

Two weeks to find a new home? We’re still in the US. My car in CR isn’t even turning on and I’m not sure it can be fixed in time to move all of our stuff… “damn, I fucked this one up…”

And yet, within a few days, I found a new spot. Within a week we packed everything up. The car was fixed the same day we found a mechanic in the mountains. Two days ago, we moved everything we owned to a new home, nestled more deeply in the cloud jungles of Costa Rica—and it’s beautiful!

From ‘this is not going well’ to ‘Oh wow, this might’ve worked out well.’ Now, we get to start this year in a new space, in a beautiful environment.

You never know what things are good for. Conversely, you never know what things are bad for.

In the words of the old Zen parable, “We’ll see…”

Maybe, just maybe, it is all working out.

Maybe every closed door isn’t a rejection from God, just a realignment…

We’ll see…
EB.