Whispering Wyrd

My wife recently suggested the idea for this post. We were out driving, just exploring, no real destination, just letting the road take us where it would. At one point, we passed a turnoff and wondered where it led. She said, “Well, all roads lead somewhere.”

It was a cool comment, and I liked it. Not just as a practical truth, but like something deeper. Because it’s true. Every road does lead somewhere. Every choice, every step, every turn whether we realize it or not takes us somewhere. And along the way we touch the lives of others, for better or worse, just like they touch ours.

Something we used to talk about a lot when we were dating, 39 years ago now, was fate. She believed in it completely but I didn’t back then. Back then, I thought everything was just chance. Coincidence. Random intersections of lives and circumstances. But life has a way of humbling certainty like that.

There have been moments, people I’ve met, events that happened in ways I simply cannot explain away as coincidence. Not honestly anyway. At some point, “chance” starts to feel like too small a word or thing to explain these things. Some people call it fate, some call it God’s will, and some call it synchronicity.

I’m not overly concerned with the label anymore. I just know that something deeper seems to be at work in the paths we all walk. Our lives take us down very different roads. Some people seem to know exactly where they’re going from an early age. They have a sense of direction in them, a clarity. They set a course and then follow it.

I wasn’t like that. I lived for the day. Full speed ahead like I’ve written about before, foot on the accelerator, hands not even on the wheel. I didn’t have a clear direction, and really, I think a lot of that goes back to early trauma. It shaped how I moved through the world, even when I didn’t understand it.

And living that way it seems almost inevitable that I met the people I did. Others moving just as fast, just as hard, and just as lost as I was. My wife on the other hand walked a very different road. She had a sense of direction. A plan. She knew what she wanted and moved toward it with intention. If we had met just a few years earlier, or a few years later, I don’t think she would have wanted anything to do with me.

We met during a very specific window in my life. A time when I was being trained and mentored by the Korean Tae Kwon Do master I’ve written about before. The man who helped me step away from drugs and alcohol and begin living in a healthier way.

That window didn’t last forever though. After he went back to Korea, I slowly lost my way again. But in that specific stretch of time our paths crossed at exactly the right time. And that’s hard for me to call anything other than fate.

I think the same is true of recovery. I would never have met the incredible people I know today if I hadn’t been through addiction. The addiction isn’t something I’m grateful for, the addiction itself brought a lot of pain, but I am deeply grateful for recovery. And for the people.

The honesty, the strength, and the compassion, the shared understanding that doesn’t need to be explained in any way. Those are roads I never would have found any other way.

So yes, life takes us down many roads. Some are really harsh and unforgiving. Some are smooth and beautiful. Also there are some roads we choose and some roads seem to choose us. But all of them lead somewhere, just like my wife said that day. And somehow along the way they lead us to each other.

I’m grateful for the road I’m on now. I’m grateful for where it’s taken me, even the parts I didn’t understand at the time. And more than anything, I’m grateful that I get to walk this road with my wife. Ich liebe dich, mein Liebling!

I hope that wherever road you’re on now is a smooth and beautiful one!

Amituofo
~Buck