Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Third Degree Tilt.
On my way to work yesterday, I put aside my tape recorder and my dictation, and I had a little talk with the Gods about choices. “What am I supposed to do now?” I asked. “I know where I’m supposed to be, but I just can’t see how to get there.”
Metaphorically speaking, I was asking about my life, but at the moment, I was stuck in traffic behind a great, big lawn tractor with planting attachments and clean-up equipment on an oversized trailer behind an oversized truck. In the center lane. With everyone in the lanes on either side of me moving ahead while I drummed on the steering wheel and wondered when my turn would come. Yeah. Wouldn’t want to miss these metaphors.
I’ve definitely felt some forks in the road recently. Big choices. Major life decisions on things a few months down the metaphorical road. Like the Gods are giving me all kinds of choices and telling me certain things are there for me and I get to pick which ones, but some will re- quire a little wickering and a little waiting for them to happen. But they’re there if I want them. Life is abundant and good and I’m in tune and whatever part of me isn’t is getting tuned up fast. This is good, all good. I like knowing my options and getting to choose, and I love that the Gods are doing this now for me. Having a menu to pick from, one with pictures, really does give me comfort and make me feel loved, and if there’s a nice surprise thrown in there, that’s good, too.
But sitting behind that steering wheel, I get lost in a memory of a rather upsetting conversation with an acquaintance.
It was one of those memories that really stung because it came at a time when I was hurting and the last thing I needed was a bout with clairvoyant cruelty. She was one of those acquaintances who often delivered “advice” and though others reported to me that she was quite accurate as a psychic, to date, not one of her many prognostications from that night has materialized for me. Not one. But at the time, she was just another acquaintance with psychic abilities and some common interests in quantum physics and we’d talk about those common interests whenever we saw one another.
On this particular time when I felt wounded, I was already in a tailspin, dealing with a leaky Home Depot roof, ill parents, unexpected book deadlines, the works.
My emotions were just under the surface and ready to spill over at the least provocation. She asked if I wanted to talk and I did. She asked what my intuition told me was coming up in the near future, and I told her.
Somewhere in there, I added that I just wished I had a clue which path to take and if only I knew a little of what was ahead, I could make better choices. This would be a change in career, a change in lifestyle, a change in everything. I really wished I knew where I was going.
She criticized my worry and my need-to-know. Told me I was insulting the Gods by worrying and by wanting to know things that were Theirs to decide and not mine. As if I wasn’t already just barely holding it together that night, now I felt like dirt.
Then she asked more about my dream for a healing center and center of learning-my vision of a Center of Light. She asked detailed questions. I told her everything I felt coming. I told her I couldn’t help but want to know if I was on the right path and which way the road curved ahead so I could make the best decisions. I was having a particularly difficult time that night and really needed some emotional support.
Then she got really quiet. “I know where you’re going,” she said.
Suddenly, I was relieved. Help, at last! I could finally pull out of this spin and collect my nerves and make a get-well plan. I was feeling better already.
“Where?” I asked. “What am I going to be doing?”
“You’ll have several choices. At least three choices. But I know which one you’re going to pick.”
“Okay, where do you see me?”
Silence. Then, “I won’t say.”
What the—?
“I know which one you’ll choose and why, but I’m not going to tell you. You could pick any of the three or more choices and be just fine, but-oh, I’d love to see the look on your face when you find out which one it’s going to be!”
I was sitting there with my mouth open while she continued to preen about what she knew about my future. I knew then how the puppy feels when kids hold a treat just out of his reach and admire it and caress it and let him see that it’s theirs, not his, before laughingly allowing him to snatch it out of their hands and enjoy it.
“What are some of my choices?” I asked. I’d already told her several possibilities I was trying to choose from. “Hmmm. Not telling. I don’t want to influence you.” “You won’t influence me. I’m not going to pick a place just because you say so. I’m going to go with my own intuition about it. Free will, right?”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to say. You might pick it be- cause of what I tell you about it. But the one you pick is going to be really good, so you want to pick the right one.”
Talk about transparent dangling carrots!
Then she explained that sometimes, when you know the future, things don’t unfold the way they’re supposed to. She said that predictions rob you of choices, and to an extent I agree. If all you rely on to live your life is some- one’s predictions, yes, you lose other opportunities. But there’s still intuition and choice and free will.
I don’t have to know when I leave for the office if it’s going to rain, but I do like to know the weather predictions for the day. If there’s a hurricane coming ashore in the evening, I like to know that it’s likely or not so I can have time to batten down the hatches. If the weatherman predicts scattered thunderstorms, I have the option of taking an umbrella with me, whether or not I choose to use it. If I don’t hear a prediction on TV or on the radio, okay, fine. I can look at the sky that morning and get an inkling of whether a storm is coming. And even with the finest of umbrellas, I may at the spur of the moment decide anyway to kick off my shoes and run through the torrents. I’ve been known to do that a time or two before!
But none of my rationale fazed the woman who claimed to know my future and was possibly the only person who could have consoled me that night, without talk of the future or any of her head games. Instead, she spent the next few minutes introducing me to all sorts of other possibilities for my future-hurtful possibilities-which preyed on all my fears. And gleefully refusing to tell me the one thing she said was good.
I was frazzled and overly emotional that night and searching for anything to give me a sense of solid ground. It’s taken the passage of time to see that none of the hurtful possibilities she conjured up have come to pass and that she couldn’t possibly have known which road I’d take because that future’s still being set. That’s the cool part. See, the Gods understand that I want a say in my future, and they’re letting me pick. It doesn’t matter what great choices this person or that might predict for me or why, I still get to choose.
It’s like the weather. I still get to decide if I want to get wet-or whether I’ll just stay in bed and snooze. If I don’t want to get wet, then I’ll do something about it. If there’s a 100% chance of rain and I’m feeling frisky, maybe I’ll wear something see-through and plunge head- long into the downpour. My choice. But there’s no point in a weatherman being intentionally cruel.
As I sat in traffic yesterday, I found myself angry at the memory of that night. It would have been so simple for her not to have said one damned gloating word about the future than to play with my emotions and feel superior. I found my fists tightening around the steering wheel.
The traffic finally started to move in front of me, but the trailer and equipment still blocked my view. I kept wishing I could see the next step in my life’s journey.
Then the road ahead dipped into a little valley, and the trailer made its descent ahead of me as the road ahead of the trailer came into view above the cab of its truck. It was almost like a ray of sunlight spotlighting the distant, open road through the clouds.
And then the thought just popped into my head: “To see your path, look beyond the obstacles.”
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