A phone call. An accident. An unwanted medical diagnosis. A ruinous investment. Failure. It all comes crashing down. Any of these can act as a huge shock. We struggle to make sense, adjust, make amends or try to correct and then we come to the realisation that something has changed. Life isn’t going to be the same. It can leave us feeling marginalised and isolated – the rest of the world seems to be getting on with their lives in the same way, but we’re on the outside. This was a feeling I had in a busy shopping centre one Christmas when I was unemployed in the last recession, having had a successful career up to that point. It’s very painful.
It can be that the answer is simple. You just need to find another job. However it can be that what we’re experiencing as a disaster is a door closing on a chapter of our lives, perhaps a way of life. Then what? It feels as though it is calling into question all that we have ever hoped for or believed of ourselves and the universe.
What if the door is closing on something that wasn’t right for us? What if something is trying to tell us that there is a better way? That there might be something of real significance round the corner?