It’s been years since I’ve done it, and yet I can remember it like it was yesterday. The paper. The pencil. The dots.
I am talking about connect the dots, the game that was the staple of my obsessive-compulsive childhood. For me, there was nothing more satisfying than sitting down with a warm glass of milk, adjusting my perpetually lopsided glasses, and opening up my big book of connect-the-dot games. I would carefully lead my pencil from numbered dot to numbered dot until the jumble of dots turned into a beautifully outlined image ready to be colored in. Chaos into order. Life was a simple and lovely thing.
As I’ve grown up, I’ve realized a few disappointing things that frustrate my inner control freak. First, life is kind of unpredictable. Second, I am not psychic (though … really I am). And third, I can’t control other people’s thoughts and beliefs (but I sure can try! Muahaha).
In all seriousness, it makes me extremely uncomfortable not knowing how my life will play out based on certain decisions that I make. I’d love it if someone could just tell me how my life will be affected by my choices. There are so many potential realities, and my decisions and actions determine which diverging path I take. Will I be a famous author? Will I be a hobo? Will I take the right path? Make the right choice? So. Much. Anxiety.
So by now we’ve established a couple of things: I have control issues, and life is a foggy abyss that we must constantly navigate using only a match. That’s depressing, and this is supposed to be a column on happiness. Worry not, I’m getting to it.
In 2005, Steve Jobs delivered an excellent and inspiring commencement speech at Stanford University (available on YouTube). In it, he gave graduates several valuable suggestions for navigating the abyss that is life. The piece of advice that resonated most with me was his analogy of a game of connect the dots. He said that it is impossible to connect the dots of life looking forward; you can only connect the dots looking retrospectively. It is only through this lens that we are able to see how all the dots—or events, choices, actions, etc.—connected perfectly to lead us to where we are today.
In Mr. Job’s speech, he gave an example of how this idea applied to his own life. When he was in college, he randomly took a calligraphy class out of sheer curiosity. Because of this class, he was able to have an eye for aesthetically pleasing fonts that he later applied to his Apple computers.
It may be too early to connect too many dots at this point in my life, but I can see how making good grades in high school allowed me to be accepted to this school, or how taking an interesting English class last year led me to enroll in a similar class this semester.
People are even better dot connectors. How many times have you thought about the fact that if you had never met a certain person, you may not have met one of your best friends? Well, think about it. It’s nuts.
The answer to making the best possible choices that result in the best possible outcomes lies not in our ability to be great planners, but in our ability to listen to our intuitions and act on them. No amount of planning in the world will guarantee a certain reality. Sometimes, things are just out of our control (and trust me, that statement gives me the heebie-jeebies more than anyone). All we can do is make decisions based on what our gut tells us is the right thing for us as individuals, and then just trust that all those choices made through intuition will lead to something great. Someday, we’ll get to play a giant connect the dots game with our lives and see how everything built upon each other in just the right way at just the right time to bring us to the present moment. I can’t wait!
And to borrow a bit of wisdom from one of my favorite Pinterest quotations: Everything turns out okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.
Addie Navarro is a Trinity sophomore. Her column runs every other Friday.
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