By Jim Hagarty
2016
“The Universe has a way of putting us exactly where we belong.”
These are the only words I could think of to comfort our daughter as she applied to multiple universities this past year and was living with uncertainty as to where she would start her new life after leaving home.
There was an excellent program at the university in Winnipeg, Manitoba, which accepted her. She is a singer and actor. She auditioned and got in. She was also accepted in Toronto and in London, Ontario. She auditioned at a prestigious school in Philadelphia and was disappointed when she didn’t make the cut.
Her mother and I had our eye on an arts program at a college in Toronto and we wanted her to take a tour of it. But she was working the weekend of the open house, so without anyone knowing, I called her boss and explained the situation. Would there be any way someone else could fill in for her at work that day? Her boss was very accommodating.
Our daughter came home from work that night and was excited to tell us that, for reasons unknown to her, she had been given Saturday off and could take the tour. But my wife had made a mistake. The college open house would be the following week, not the coming Saturday. However, there was an open house at the university in Windsor, Ontario. My wife and daughter decided, as she had the day off, that they would attend the open house. They enjoyed the three-hour drive to Windsor and the tour of the campus. As it happened, some students my daughter had acted with attended that school and were helping with the open house.
Still, we had our sights set on the college in Toronto. I approached her boss again, explained that we had made a mistake, that it was the following Saturday she needed off. Don’t worry, I was told. It would be arranged. But it wasn’t. Her employer must have forgotten about my request. My daughter never did tour the college.
Instead, she auditioned at Windsor, was accepted, and that is where we took her on Sunday. She begins her classes today. She has had a fantastic, amazing week. She could not be happier.
But in a way, she is there because of human error. I managed to arrange the wrong weekend off for her. She took the tour of a university that wasn’t really in her sights and missed the tour of the college we had in mind.
But the Universe had other ideas. Windsor is where she was meant to study for the next four years for a career in the performing arts. The fact that she feels so comfortable there after only a few days is proof of that, at least it is to me.
We hadn’t planned on Windsor. And yet, there she is. Almost by accident, or at least, what appeared to be one.
When we take a step towards fate, fate takes a step towards us.
“The Universe has a way of putting us exactly where we belong.”
We made our best effort to channel her in a different direction.
Thank God we screwed up.
Somehow, the Universe knew our daughter was overlooking Windsor. And somehow, it made sure that she didn’t.
I do not believe in predestination. We all have a free will. But powers greater than all of us sometimes take it upon themselves to give our free will a little nudge.
That has been my experience, time and again.
