Time and the Stories of Our Lives

Today marks my second year in my current job. It makes me think about time and how every moment spent in every pit stop is all about the continuous - sometimes silent, sometimes turbulent, sometimes just a steady drifting - weaving of stories for all the chapters of our lives.

Right now, I'm thinking about connecting the dots as how Steve Job's said it in his beautiful and inspiring commencement address in 2005:

"...you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life." - Steve Jobs

So how does connecting the dots work with staying in the present? It's been said that it's futile to look back and wasteful to jump ahead because we're needed in the present. The here and now is the time we're supposed to spend all our energies on.

I believe that connecting the dots is not going against staying in the here and now. Perhaps, at certain points in our lives we could take the time to connect the dots to see what kind of stories we've woven. Connecting the dots is like reading those chapters we've created and an opportunity to understand if we're near to telling the stories of our lives the way we want it written, before we fade away.

Each of us has a story to tell the world. Time and time again we're given a chance to ponder the stories and listen to our hearts if we're doing ourselves justice by paying attention to our personal stories.

We could be anyone in this one big universe. We could be like a meteor streaking in one brilliant but brief haze or we could be a slow quiet fire that burns unfailingly. Regardless of the role, we each have stories waiting to be written. All it takes is an effort to appreciate the dots that helped create our stories.

I don't think we just fade away quietly. Every story is written to touch someone. And if that happens, I think that's when we could truly say we have lived.