“Sometimes rejection is redirection.”
– Tavis Smiley, recalling a lesson to him from Maya Angelou
I feel like this is a bit of a companion piece to my post about laying foundations under your castle in the air. In that one, I wrote of dreaming big and then breaking down the action steps to achieve those goals.
But what happens when you encounter a gob-smacking “no” in the middle of your path. What if you are, in fact, rejected?
Does your castle crumble? Hardly. But it may be unclear for a while whether your thought-to-be Gothic castle actually wants to be a Norman stone castle. Harkening back to my previous post, “Castles in the air are designed to evolve.”
In those moments, there are piles of different stones here and there. It’s hard to know how to put those stones together, wondering if what you’re building has any semblance to the castle you dream of. This is a feeling I am acutely familiar with. To be honest, there are still a few stone piles around me as I write this.
But Maya’s words by way of Tavis resonate with me. My castle is still there; it’s just not as clear as it once was. So, in this moment, I am listening to and watching the world around me. I am giving my fullest attention to this moment right now. I am being patient, stacking one stone at a time and seeing the shape that’s supposed to be there reveal itself.
My redirection is happening. I may not know exactly what the shape or purpose is yet, but that’s ok.
