Fate looking back is science. fate looking ahead is mystery.

​On my run yesterday, I listened to Donald Miller interview Matthew McConaughey. I've always been fascinated by McConaughey. Clearly you women don't have a monopoly on the "crush" factor with this guy.

He said something in this interview that I spent the rest of my run thinking about. He said, looking back - fate is always science. But looking ahead - fate is always a mystery.

His point was that when we look back on our lives, we can see how the dots connect. Maybe they don't connect in a way we'd hoped or in a way that leaves us in a good space. But the dots connect. We can see how one thing led to another. The past is no longer fate, but science.

Looking ahead, though, he said, we have no idea how the dots are going to connect. The future is a mystery.

McConaughey went on to say that we can sit back and put our lives in the hands of fate, or we can get up and dance with it.

I thought about running when he said that. I thought about how running has changed my life. I looked back over the past 6 years when running became important to me. I could see how many of the dots in my life connected. I could see how running connected many of the dots in my life before I ever took the first stride - dots that for the longest time had looked and felt random.

But for running to turn a mystery into science, I had to show up and dance with it. Many days I wanted to skip the running and simply lean into the "idea" that I'm a runner and let that alone solve the mystery. But that's not dancing with fate - that's turning life over to it.

Maybe that was McConaughey's great point. That there is no such thing as fate. There is only dancing. And we either get up and dance or we don't.

And maybe it's important who we dance with and why we dance. Are we dancing with people that are fired up to see us become better dancers? And are we dancing to be the star of the show or dancing as a way of letting everyone else know they are invited to be in the show?

Are we dancing with fate in a way that desires the mysteries of the people around us to become a science that is good and safe and healthy and accepted?

We all have a chance to dance today or sit out.

We all have a chance to dance for ourselves today or dance for others.

We all have a chance to be the beautiful unfolding of mysteries all around us.