spite of what your instincts tell you in these situations, you still hope for some last-minute miracle, something to change the course of events so you won’t have to get to a difficult crossroads, make a painful decision or a face a frightening change.
Even though you may dread these turning points, you are not completely surprised when they happen. They are what we might call the “expected unexpected.” On some level, you have been aware of the transition taking place all along. This doesn’t make the experience any easier or less agonizing, but you are a bit more prepared than you would have been if you hadn’t seen it coming. Therefore, you can navigate through it more easily. In these cases, the lament “How did I get here?” is more of a rhetorical question. You do know how you got to where you are. You’re not disoriented—just disappointed.
Recently I bumped into an old friend of mine at a fund-raiser. I hadn’t seen or spoken to her for some time and noticed she was there without her husband. I knew their marriage had been extremely rocky, and had always sensed that it was just a matter of time before they split up.
“How are you?” I asked, suspecting I knew what the answer would be.
“I’ve been better,” she replied with a grimace. “It’s been a really difficult year. Larry and I separated last summer.”
“I’m so sorry. I realize how hard that must be.”
“Thanks, but I know you aren’t surprised,” she admitted. “Neither was I, actually. I kind of knew it was coming for a long time, but hoped somehow it wouldn’t. I kept waiting for something—don’t ask me what—to intervene and prevent the inevitable. Does that make sense?”
Of course it did. I’d been there—we all have.
Turning Points That Sneak Up on Us
Sometimes turning points can be quiet, almost invisible, and therefore, hard to predict and easy to miss. They sneak up on us day by day without our even realizing they have arrived, so that when we come face to face with them, at first they don’t look like turning points at all. Perhaps we simply feel bored, restless, somehow unsettled within ourselves. We may feel sad for no reason, even depressed, and seem to have lost our passion for love, for sex, for work, for living. Something is not right, but we aren’t sure what it is. If someone asked us, “Are you at a turning point in your life?” we’d probably answer, “No, I’m just overworked,” or “No, I’m just worn out from having two toddlers at home with me.” We don’t even suspect that we might be at some important crossroads—we just don’t like how we are feeling.
What is happening here? By way of some underground pathways in our psyche, we have been going through a transition and reached a turning point without even knowing we were approaching it or that we have reached it at all. Deep within us, something has been shifting so slowly that it has been virtually imperceptible. As we will see later in this book, we are often so skilled at ignoring what has been happening inside us, especially if we feel that it threatens our known reality, that we don’t even recognize we’ve come to a cosmic intersection in our life even when we’re standing right in the middle of it.
My friend Pamela just went through this kind of turning point. Pamela owned a children’s clothing store, and for months I’d been hearing her complain about myriad situations in her life: her employees were driving her crazy; remodeling of the store was taking longer than she’d anticipated; her nine-year-old son was doing poorly in school, and she was having trouble helping him as much as she wanted due to her busy schedule; and she was too stressed to think about dating, even though it had been five years since her divorce.
Late one evening Pamela called me and, as usual, began telling me about how horrible her day had been. “I just don’t know what to do,” she lamented. “Why do things have to be this hard?”
“Maybe the Universe is trying to tell you something,” I suggested.
“Like what—that my life sucks?” she responded with a sarcastic laugh.
“No, like that maybe you’re at an important crossroads. You haven’t enjoyed the store for some time now—it’s doing well financially, but it’s a burden rather than the creative challenge it was when you first opened. You have no time for your son, and no time for yourself. Perhaps you’re supposed to be making a change.”
Pamela was silent for a moment. Then, in a very calm voice, she replied, “Like selling my business.”
“Have you thought about it?”
“To tell you the truth, I actually haven’t. But as I hear you describe it, suddenly the pieces are fitting together. Everything in my life is screaming ‘SELL!’—I just haven’t been listening. I worked so hard to make the store successful, and couldn’t ever imagine I wouldn’t want to be doing this.”
“It is financially successful,” I reassured her. “But if you don’t want to be doing what you are doing every day, then you’re not succeeding on the inside.”
“And that’s why I have been so miserable,” Pamela admitted.
Soon after our phone call, my friend sold her business, took two months off to spend more time with her son and reevaluate her life, and in a burst of inspiration decided to start a new company specializing in remodeling and decorating children’s rooms. Pamela runs the business out of her house and is happier than she’s ever been. She’s even dating a furniture designer she met working on one of her new projects.
Like Pamela, we become so attached to the road we are on, to the itinerary we have mapped out, that when a new road appears we may not even see it. Often in these circumstances, it does take someone else—a family member, a friend, a therapist—to point out to us that we are indeed at some kind of crucial turning point.
Turning Points Disguised as Dead Ends
Last week I was driving to an appointment at a healing center in the foothills of the nearby mountains. I’d never been to this place before, but had clear directions that told me to follow one road for a while, and then look for the turnoff to the center, so I wasn’t concerned about getting lost. It was a beautiful afternoon, and I was enjoying the serene atmosphere of the countryside.
Suddenly the road stopped and there was nowhere else to go. DEAD END, the sign read. “How could this be possible?” I wondered, utterly perplexed. I hadn’t seen the turn I was supposed to take, and I was sure I’d looked carefully for it. There was nothing to do but slowly retrace my path. Sure enough, several miles back I noticed that there was a very small lane winding up the mountain, its identifying sign partially hidden behind an overgrown flowering bush. I remembered passing that road but dismissing it, certain it couldn’t be the one I was looking for. Now I understood how I had missed the turnoff—I’d assumed it would be a well-paved street, and clearly marked. I didn’t recognize it when I saw it because it wasn’t what I was expecting.
Sometimes in life we come to what appear to be dead ends, but are actually missed turning points. Suddenly it seems we can’t go any farther in the direction we were traveling, and we feel trapped, lost. We don’t remember seeing any alternative routes; we don’t recall being confronted with a choice. We simply feel stuck. “What am I supposed to do now?” we lament as we stare at the emotional equivalent of a no way out sign. The answer is to do just what I did on that country road—we need to retrace our steps, to go back and see if we can find the turning point we missed because we weren’t expecting it.
One of my clients is a very successful and well-known film producer. When we first met, I asked him how he got started in the entertainment business. “I was desperate,” he answered with a grin and went on to explain his story. Nelson was a struggling screenwriter who moved to Los Angeles with his wife and newborn son in hopes of breaking into the film industry. For two years he tried to sell his scripts with absolutely no luck. Soon he had