It says go right but maybe you go left this time

I was reading an article on the September 11 attacks about people who would have died that day but didn’t. In it were stories of people who made small but unusual routine changes that changed the course of their lives. There was a guy attending a conference who went back to his hotel to change into a different shirt. There were people who missed their flights for one reason or the other. There was a gentleman who volunteered to go back to their office downtown so that he could collect a document that his team had forgotten. Someone decided to run an errand that his assistant would have done for him.

There are things that happen in our lives, either good or bad, that will change our plans and routines. It may be a random thought, your intuition or a sudden circumstance that you cannot change. Sometimes it is a small thing like taking your shoes inside, deciding to take a break to be with family or a big thing like making an unfavourable decision that may affect hundreds of people’s lives.

Things will not go according to plan all the time; the plan may actually not work this time round. It might cost you to actually go through with this plan that always works. So that one time you strongly feel you need to go left and you usually go right, maybe you should go left.

#instinct #change #planning #decisions

I came back to the house last evening and removed my shoes at the door as usual. Right there and then, a thought came to my mind: take your shoes inside. I ignored it, I was tired and just wanted to settle in and rest plus it is January, the driest month of the year. I woke up in the dead of night and it was raining cats and dogs. I rushed to the main door and my shoes were soaked wet. Then I remembered the thought I had when I came in some hours before.

On 7th August 1998, there was a terror attack in Nairobi, Kenya. A bomb that had targeted the American Embassy then blew up leaving hundreds dead and thousands injured. My mother worked in an office building some meters away from the blast. Their building did not suffer too much damage structurally but all its windows were shattered throwing glass missiles at people both inside and outside the building. A huge number of people got seriously injured from the cuts. Where was my mother? She had to leave the office to attend my school’s prize-giving ceremony.