Over the years I feel I have become more and more open to listening to what the universe is trying to say... to sort of trusting in its grand design or whatever you might call it... maybe it's a way of coping with what is anyway not in my control... I cannot control the stream of events or bend them to my bidding... they are anyway going to go as they have to... but when I look back, I can't help noticing a thread... that many of the things that happened outside my control led me to places eventually where I needed to be... as Marcus Aurelius says, the impediment in the way becomes the way or something like that... some years ago now, when I first came here, I was going through a pretty low phase... I had to ask myself why I was here, why was I brought here if it was not meant to be... and then... something happened and it all fell perfectly in place... I could never have planned for how it fell in place... without trying to or pushing anything it fell in place... and I suppose that was the event that made me realise this unity in the design of things... does not mean that everything will have a good or positive ending, mind you... it just means that the path in many ways will lead you to where you are supposed to be... it may be a very hard path and it may not have much happiness in the end even... but that's your path... different from everyone else... which is why comparing with other people and saying they have it easy is senseless, pointless, fruitless... maybe they do... maybe they don't... they are not wired like you and they don't have a path set out like you... that's not to say that after this particular event I have been accepting everything more stoically... not at all... realisations always come after the fact, not before... what they say about hindsight and all that... there was another point after that where I had to ask myself why the universe brought me all the way forward only to stump me again...what was the point? was it all going to be for nothing? and then when things moved forward, it was just not the way I wanted them to... I was again comparing with others who with a lot less got so much more... it seemed so very unfair... I could kick the universe, truly ;) ... like I said, I was still trying to control my path but it didn't help... I had to take the path laid out for me.... of course you could ask what if you refused it and just sat there... I don't know... I cannot speak for alternate paths but at that point that was the only path that took me forward and one of the things I am inclined to do is move forward instead of sitting still... that path bore fruit, I must say... again when I looked back, I could tell it was probably for my makeup the better path... for someone else, maybe not... so comparing with others did not make sense... when that realisation came, I again figured that the universe was taking me where I needed to be... along a different path... and now... yes, I am again stumped... I am again at this point asking the universe, why?... why does it have to be so difficult? why give me something and then take it away? why make it harder than it needs to be? and I do not have an answer of course...  the answers seem to have always come later, not in the way I wanted them, not in the way I could have imagined... maybe an answer to this will also come... let's see...