Map of life

Shakespeare said, “the course of true love never did run smooth”. But the same could be said about life.

It’s never plain sailing. We can be bobbing along in our boat down the stream of life. The sun’s out and everything feels great. Then all of a sudden along comes a storm, threatening to capsize our boat and dump us unceremoniously into the water.

At times it can even feel like somebody stole our oars!

I’m not sure I’ve ever met a single person who hasn’t got soaked by the rain during their life. Obstacles or challenges pop up and it’s natural to feel discouraged and frustrated as our boat gets turned round in the storm. We might shout out, ‘hey! I don’t want to go that way’, but the universe has other plans.

Often, though, disappointment might see us wanting to give up completely. That door ahead is closed so we may as well wave the flag of defeat and, nursing our wounds, decide to stop trying.

But is this just the universe re-routing our GPS navigation? It could be that your boat is being nudged slightly towards a better destination and somewhere more aligned with your soul.

Your inner critical voice tries to push the ‘woe is me’ narrative when actually the barriers you are facing could instead be opportunities or blessings in disguise. Wouldn’t it be amazing if you potentially ended up somewhere you could never have imagined?

When you have the benefit of hindsight and can see the bigger picture, you might look back and be glad your boat took a ‘wrong’ turn. Moreover, that terrible storm you went through totally sucked at the time, but perhaps you became a better sailor for it, ready to face the next set of experiences that come your way.