As I set out on my daily walk near my new home in Calgary, I pause to look into the distance, and see the range of Rocky Mountains that jut into the horizon to the west. They cut an imperfectly perfect backdrop for the big clear blue Alberta sky.
My gaze stays on the mountains. The mountains that have always had my heart. The mountains that hold so many of my best memories. They are the vistas of my childhood, and my youth. The endless plains, interrupted by jagged, soaring peaks. They can still raise my spirits, and my heartrate, with even the most casual glance in their direction.
As I approach the Bow River nearby, I hear the rushing water below. Wild prairie grasses crunch beneath my feet, their gentle sway stopped for a second, with every step forward. Caught up in a scene like that, it is be hard to make the moment anything but perfect.
“Why didn’t I move here ten years ago?” I stand there a while, wondering.
I hadn’t been called back. There was a life built elsewhere; relationships formed, and roots planted. I did not know I needed to go, until I did. It is not that where I was had been wrong, but my time there met its natural end. Perhaps there was a yearning in me, but it was displaced. Somehow the road led me back. Back to the place I am more at ease. The place where I am more at home—free to roam and be me.
We don’t know what we don’t know, and that is a good thing. If we had all the answers, and were all knowing, we would not be blissfully unaware of what lies ahead. We would overthink, and second guess our every action. We would be stopped in our own tracks—immovable and ineffective.
If we knew the hardships, we would surely try to avoid them. If we could see the bliss, perhaps it would not be so unexpectedly sweet. If we directed ourselves away from our intended life’s sequences, and consequences, we would not find and explore the path that leads us to our natural junctures, over the necessary obstacles, and into the life meant just for us, and no one else.
We don’t know what we don’t know. But I do know, this is where I’m meant to be.
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