Storms Clear Paths, But we Must Choose To Follow Them

​Yesterday, quite out of the blue, I received a message from a dear friend that said, "I thought you might like this." And then attached to her message was a Paulo Coelho quote that states:

"Not all storms come to disrupt your life, some come to clear your path."

Much more than liking her message, I needed it.

We hadn't spoken in a few weeks so she had no idea that life has indeed been stormy recently, so the timing of her message felt divinely orchestrated.

Then this morning I wake up and an article I wrote 4 years ago showed up in my memories. A portion of the article said this:

An exhausted mind wants you to stop - stop and find cover and find rest. An exhausted mind doesn't want to try any more doors, and the easiest way to skip trying more doors is convincing ourselves that no more doors exist.

How much of your life have you left behind because you missed going through doors you convinced yourself didn't exist?

How much more of yourself will you discover today if you convince yourself there is always one more door, at least one that you haven't tried to open yet?

When you believe there is one more you keep going.

The real exhaustion in life is believing there are no more doors. That's a belief fueled by giving up. Giving up is as close as one can get to dying while still breathing; there is little difference between death and giving up.

I read those words this morning from 4 years ago and have been reflecting on them. And these thoughts came to me: sometimes giving up can be greatly disguised by a lot self-talk convincing yourself you haven't. Sometimes you can convince yourself you're opening new doors when all you're really doing is going through old doors to nowhere while painting the doors a different color to convince yourself they are new.

Don't get me wrong. I know in the grand scheme of things I have not given up. And won't. But to a degree, when we don't explore doors that have been calling us, when we don't explore them for fear of leaving behind doors that have been comfortable, or for fear of walking through doors into a complete unknown, maybe that is not actually giving up, but I believe it's something very like it.

"Not all storms come to disrupt your life, some come to clear your path."

Storms can clear the path, but storms don't make us follow them. That's our job.

I am writing this today because when this article pops up four years from now, I don't want to be reflecting once again on doors I did not open, on cleared paths I did not walk. I don't want to reflect on the possibility that I've given up more than I think.

I want to reflect back on this storm and declare that what I went through wasn't really a storm at all.

It was a door.