Do you ever feel like there's a "theme" to your week? A message/adage that follows you around, seeps through your mind and influences your actions?
Well, this past week, my theme was "connecting the dots." It all started when one of my friends told me to watch Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement speech. I ignored it -- too long. But then another friend from a very different group of mine told me to watch it a few days later, and I thought, "Ok, two people in one week is a pretty big coincidence." It's not like his speech is a new YouTube hit -- I mean, 2005? I was still in high school.
Suffice it to say that the speech did, as most inspirational speeches tend to do, "change my life," as my latter friend promised it would (at least, I still feel the residual inspirational effects of it!). You'll have to watch it yourself, but the main point that stuck with me was that only will we be able to connect the dots of our lives when we look back on it. Basically, hindsight is 20/20. Such a great message and reminder, especially to a 21 year-old like me, who continually struggles with the purpose behind my actions, and where my future will end up.
After feeling inspired by Jobs (such an incredible man), I retired that night and decided to pick up my current literary fling, "Marco Polo Didn't Go There" by travel writer, Rolf Potts. It's a collection of witty and post-modern written travel stories by Potts. Because I haven't gotten sun in a few days thanks to my desk job (wah), I decided to read a story based on the Mediterranean area.
"Turkish Knockout" was my story of choice, which told of Potts' experience as a victim of a date-rape drug. After regaining consciousness after the ordeal, he masochistically relives the events of the day and expresses how the each little encounter he had had with various "strangers" ultimately led to his demise (there are obviously more details to the story, but that's why you should just go pick up the book and read it yourself, duhhh!).
Sure, the end of Potts' story was not successful, as Jobs' was, but Potts did emote the same message:
"A certain 101-level existentialist (Kierkegaard, I think) once suggested that life is lived forwards, but understood backwards."
Ding, ding!
So there we have it, ladies and gents. The message of my week, indirectly told to me via two different friends and a book: connecting the dots, and having faith that our actions are all part of a master plan that will all make sense one day.
