Road Signs

This evening a friend--about to embark on a journey that will involve moving her life to the other side of the world--blogged about destiny.  The things that have happened to her in the last 6 months do seem full of signs, guiding her down some heretofore unknown path.  I, too, have lived through times when the universe seemed friendly and well-lit and my path was plain before me.  How clear the guideposts are on such a path, their messages so unmistakable that, even after the passage of many years, no other possible interpretation comes to mind.

Who can say if the arcs of our lives are fated or fluid?  My experiences thus far have offered suggestions of each.  Since I was a small child, I've had a sense of my life as a long walk on a road that extends great distances behind me as well as before me.  It's good when it's purposeful and I'm working toward something with dedication and intent.  But I'm most aware of my trajectory when I've profoundly wished to stop time, even to turn around.  It's very plain at those moments that there are aspects of the journey that have little to do with free will and everything to do with a kind of current on which we're both passengers and prisoners.  We are going somewhere.  We can rush toward it with confidence or resist to the point of brokenness, but we are going.  

In the 1950s, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote the oft-quoted "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings have a human experience."  
I believe we have destinies with other souls.  We may have histories with them as well, but of this I'm less sure.  It's plain to me, though, that there are, scattered across the world and across time, others with whom we are meant to keep company.  Perhaps when we're powerfully drawn to places, it's because of the presence there of our kindred souls. We give ourselves to the journey.  We find our kind; we find our countries.