There came a point in Barbara Walters’ life, not long after graduating from college and entering the workforce, that her father’s business ventures failed and she was left supporting her parents and sister. It was a devastating time for her entire family, made worse by her father’s attempted suicide. But looking back on it, Walters ponders this as one of the moments that defined the rest of her life.
“So here’s the big question: If my parents had not descended into financial ruin, would I have had the success I have had? Would I, after my divorce, have moved back in with Mom and Dad, perhaps taken a vacation, hung around until I could get another job in television? Was all this, in a strange way, my destiny?”
Destiny does work in strange and mysterious (and sometimes painful) ways. Last month, in Anderson Cooper’s memoir, Dispatches from the Edge, he talked at length about how reporting from the most devastated places on earth was the only thing that helped him overcome the numbness he felt after his father’s death and his brother’s suicide. But what if Cooper’s father and brother hadn’t died? What if there was’t any numbness to overcome? Would the young dream chaser still have gone to Somalia with a fake press pass and a home video camera or would he have just stayed home and taken a regular job? How differently might things have turned out?
We can wonder the same thing of Andre Agassi. In January, we read his autobiography, Open, in which he revealed that he hated tennis, but ultimately it led him to his destiny of helping underprivileged children through his charter school and charitable foundation. But what if Agassi had quit tennis like he wanted to? What would he have done with his life instead? Would he ever have reached the level of fame and fortune that’s allowed him to build a charter school and offer top educational resources to children in need?
As Walters, Cooper and Agassi show us, everything happens for a reason. Sometimes the things we understand least are the ones that help us most in reaching our destiny.
Conversation starter: Tell us about something in your life that “happened for a reason.”
Read along! This month we’re reading Audition: A Memoir by Barbara Walters.
I think I am a little too close to all the events that might become defining moments in my life…so I’ll have to get back to you. In the meantime, I definitely have the mindset of “everything happens for a reason.” Sometimes it just takes awhile to figure it out!