My front door howls when the wind blows. In fact, I discovered that I have a gap at the bottom of the door that I can stick my finger through.
When I first noticed it, I found it amusing, even nostalgic. The sound is reminiscent of when I used to listen to an audio recording of a snowstorm in the mountains as a type of white noise during meditation.
I even appreciated that while I was playing Valheim (a crafting / survival game that I highly recommend, if you are into that sort of thing), the howling got so loud that I could hear it in my office, even with my headphones on. I didn’t mind it at the time, because I was in a raging storm in the game as well, and the howling added to the ambiance.
As I write this, it’s 4 AM, and after waking up an hour ago and unsuccessfully trying to go back to sleep, I have finally decided that it’s time to fix the front door. Even now though, it gives me a wonderful story to tell.
Everything in your life is serving you. Every inconvenience, every oddball experience is benefiting you, and if you ignore it, it will usually get bigger until you can’t anymore.
Such is life, and that is a good thing. It adds variety and spice, but more importantly, it is always worth more than its face value.
It could be a broken shoelace, the one flavor of soup you want at the store being the only one sold out, or an unexpected rainstorm. Besides the obviousness of it, there is always value in what it causes you to think or do in response to it.
It may be a bit quirky or even downright annoying in the moment it is happening, but if you look back, you can see how it was serving you. That experience led to something else, that led to something else, that led to something that you wanted, but in a way that you never could have imagined.
You are always being guided by your true self down your path of least resistance toward what you want. So bless the inconveniences and the oddballs, and appreciate the gift they are giving you, even if they howl.