T-Intersections: How life changes direction (#542)

I have come to think of life not as a long road, but as a series of T-intersections.

For long stretches, we travel forward assuming the road continues indefinitely.

We settle into rhythm.

We grow comfortable with direction.

We tell ourselves that this is simply how things will be.

Then, without warning, the road ends.

There is no straight ahead. Only left or right. And no going back.

If you hesitate too long, you hit the wall.

The Difficulty of Blind Choices

What makes these moments unsettling is not the choice itself, but the blindness that accompanies it.

At a T-intersection, you cannot see around the corner.

There are no previews, no assurances, no whispered hints from the road about which direction leads to calm water and which leads to rapids.

You stand there with only what you know, what you fear, and what you hope.

And then you turn.

Sometimes the decision feels right almost immediately. The road opens. The light improves. The surface smooths. You feel as though you have stepped into alignment with your own life.

Other times, doubt arrives quickly. The bends feel unfamiliar. The landmarks do not match the map you imagined. You begin to suspect that perhaps you chose wrongly.

And sometimes, of course, you are certain you did.

The Myth of the One Defining Choice

We often treat these moments as if they define everything.

The job we take.

The city we move to.

The research path we follow.

The relationship we begin - or end.

The professional direction we choose when we are still learning who we are.

But roads are kinder than we imagine.

A wrong turn is not a dead end.

It is simply a longer route.

If you keep moving, roads connect in unexpected ways.

A series of turns can eventually return you to where you began, not unchanged, but wiser.

More aware of how little you could see from that first intersection.

The mistake is not choosing the wrong direction.

The mistake is believing that one turn fixes your destiny forever.

Lessons From the Turns Behind Us

Looking back over a life, and I suspect this becomes clearer with age, the important thing is not whether each decision was correct.

It is that we moved.

That we had the courage to turn when the road demanded it.

In my own life, some of the most important developments came from turns I did not fully understand at the time.

Professional shifts. Academic risks. Personal decisions made with incomplete information.

Moments when the road ahead simply vanished and something in me had to choose.

What I see now is that none of those turns stood alone.

Each turn is connected to another.

Each turn shaped what followed.

Each turn taught me something about direction, uncertainty, and resilience.

The Courage to Turn

Life is not a straight road with occasional detours.

It is a network of turns, corrections, and quiet recalibrations.

The courage is not in always getting it right.

The courage is in turning at all.

And in trusting that even the wrong road, walked long enough with honesty and commitment, can teach you how to find your way home.

Rick’s Commentary

When I look, I can see that some of the most important turns in my life came when I felt least prepared to choose.

I did not always know where the road led, only that standing still was not an option.

What comforts me is this: none of those turns were wasted.

Each one shaped the veterinarian, teacher, and person I eventually became.

And perhaps that is all any of us can ask of the road - not certainty, but the chance to keep moving.

Now, with more intersections behind me than ahead, I understand something I did not know when I first began:

Roads do not reveal their purpose at the moment you turn onto them.

Meaning appears later, in the distance you have traveled and the person you have grown into along the way.

I am grateful for every turn, because together they led me exactly where I needed to go.

#bunyipsbooksbeyond