Many years ago, I was on a flight heading across the country to meet my husband. He was working away from home at the time. Instead of driving home and flying together, we each took the closest plane and decided to meet at the airport that would take us to Tahiti for vacation.
As I boarded my flight solo, turning right to head towards coach and picking a seat near the back, another young woman close to my age was doing the same. We were the only two people that were in coach. It was as though the universe was giving us the chance to meet, holding everyone else in line back preventing them from boarding the plane.
She started talking to me. I do not recall what was said during the initial interaction, but I do know it was enough to make me move seats so I could sit next to her on the flight.
I was drawn to her energy. She reminded me so much of the person I used to be before I became hardened from the traumas I had experienced in my life. She was filled with a light and high on life, never meeting a stranger. In a strange way, I felt like I was her if I would have taken a different path and I was being shown who I could have been if my choices would have been different in my youth.
For many years prior to this encounter, I had been struggling with the notion of “If only” scenarios. “If only I had ended the relationship with my boyfriend in high school sooner because I knew it would never last.” “If only I had more respect for myself and did not stay in a relationship with a person that had zero respect for me when I was young.” “If only I never had a baby when I was a teenager, what would my life look like now?”
I thought that maybe if I never had a baby in high school, or a child with disabilities that my life would have been easier and perhaps better. I always wondered how my life would have been if I never had a baby so young and I got to experience my youth alongside my peers.
That day on the plane, she answered those questions for me. As we talked the entire time on that flight, hearing each other’s stories and speaking to each other as though we were reuniting with an old friend, I realized something.
Hearing her story and the choices she made not to have her baby and where her life took her made me realize either choice I made, my life still would have been challenging. I would not have been free from struggle or pain. No matter which decision I made, my life would have turned out neither better nor worse. It would have just been different.
I felt as though a weight had been lifted off my shoulders after having that ah-ha moment of clarity. I will forever be grateful for meeting her that day and for her unknowingly giving me the answer to my questions that had been plaguing me for years, releasing me from the anguish of all the “If only” thoughts.
I do not believe in coincidences. Things do not merely happen for no reason. The universe is always guiding and helping us along the way, putting people in our path when we need them most. If we stay open to receive and become more consciously aware of the signs from the universe, perhaps it can bring us clarity and peace.