Be Careful What You Wish For and Pay Attention to the Signs
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I have a client.
We’ve been working together for a long time.
Sometimes the client reschedules our sessions, but not often.
Here’s something I’ve noticed: on the days when I am feeling anxious about how busy I am, this client often cancels.
This morning, I was feeling piles of mental and emotional pressure.
In the morning-tangle of my mind, I couldn’t work out whether to go and see my daughter’s nursery ‘sing’ a short song as part of a long Easter assembly.
I wasn’t able to make the decision, partly because of how close it might end up coming to the time to meet this client.
And then the client cancelled.
An important thing to say is: I love this client.
I love their work.
I love our sessions.
I leave almost every one feeling connected to what really matters; feeling more a live in the world.
And yet under pressure, in morning-tangles, I often wish unconsciously for cancellation.
And then it comes.
And I have the thought: Robbie, be careful what you wish for.
Of course, those of us brought up in a mostly-atheist, completely rational, science driven society like me can make some pretty convincing (and possibly ‘correct'!) arguments about this: that really I’m only noticing it when it’s like that, ignoring the times when it isn’t. (In research they call things like this ‘confirmation bias’.)
And… maybe I am.
But someone brought up in a in a mostly-atheist, completely rational, science driven society like me, who has done deep work with people for a decade or so now, knows there’s more to be paid attention to than that.
I’ve had three different clients come to me recently with truly wacky stories of synchronicity in their lives.
Realising they had been randomly introduced to someone who they had accidentally used a picture of months ago.
Wishes for a sign from the universe being followed by scarcely believable nature-related experiences.
Finding people online AND in real life at the same moment.
After one of these conversations, crossing the incredibly busy crossroads at Angel in Islington, I was thinking about my friend Dom as I snuck halfway across the road in traffic. I paused and edged my way through a crowd.
Then two hands came down on my shoulders. And there, behind me, was Dom.
How did they? What else like that do we sometimes miss if we’re not paying attention? If we’re explaining things away with mostly-atheist, completely rational, science-driven explanations?
I’m fond of a parable where a man turns on the TV one morning to find the weather forecaster warning people in his area to evacuate because of a forthcoming flood. He thinks about it, and then decides not to: ‘God will save me,’ he says to himself.
His neighbour knocks on his door, inviting him to come with her as she evacuates.
‘No, I’m staying,’ he says. ‘God will save me.’
The rains come, and the floodwater rises. A boat approaches the man’s house.
‘Come with us, we can take you to safety,’ shouts the man in the boat.
‘No, I’m staying here, God will save me,’ says the man.
The waters rise even further, and the man climbs to his roof.
A helicopter hovers nearby, and the police officer shouts through a megaphone in it, ‘Climb up, we’ll take you to safety.’
‘No,’ he shouts back to her. ‘I’m staying. God will save me.’
The waters rise.
The man is washed away, drowning in the flood.
He arrives in heaven, and finds himself in front of God.
Aghast, he asks, ‘God, why didn’t you save me?’
‘Well,’ says God. ‘I sent a weather forecast, your neighbour, a boat and a helicopter. What more did you want?’
Pay attention to the signs: if we are open to them; sometimes they arrive.
We ignore them at our peril.
The world moves in mysterious ways.
Be careful what you wish for.
And pay attention to the signs.
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This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.