The Detour
On Meaning Disguised as Inconvenience
A warning flashed on my dashboard.
Front tire.
Pull over immediately.
I had somewhere to be. The kind of appointment that feels essential until the universe decides otherwise.
There are events.
There are the feelings about the events.
Then there is the story we wrap around both, trying to make it mean something.
So, I waited.
Scheduled the repair.
Started walking to grab a bite.
And then, in a window of time that should not have existed, I ran into someone I’d met at a conference earlier this year.
We talked. Smiles beaming. The kind of conversation that only happens when you’re not supposed to be where you are.
If the tire hadn’t failed, I would have been elsewhere, missing this entirely.
The question isn’t whether life has meaning.
It’s whether we’re willing to notice when the meaning is being handed to us, disguised as inconvenience.
The flat tire was the gift.
Emergence with Rachel Weissman is a weekly exploration of the interconnections between consciousness, technology, and planetary flourishing.
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