When I was 14 years old, I had a fully developed vision for my life. After completing school and travelling the world, I would meet and marry a great guy, at which point we would settle onto our farm. He would spend his days being a success and an all-around perfect guy while I would spend my days being a wildly successful writer, creating work in a beautiful sunlit studio (which he built for me, of course), while raising our six well-behaved children. Six. Somewhere after making the list of the traditional names I would choose for our six lovely children (three girls and three boys), I heard a little chuckle in the distance. It was the Universe, and it was laughing. Hard.

That was the last time that dream had any chance of being true, right there in that moment in my own mind.

Let’s face it, we all had far-fetched dreams when we were 14 and did not yet know how the world worked. We expected the Universe to hear our request, bow and say, “As you wish.” It was easy then, free of much complication, and seen through an innocent veil of our world view. I’m sure my two oldest imaginary children, Jane and Eric, would have felt the same at that age.

Soon, the actual machine of life happens. Choices happen. The influence of others happens. The intertwined paths we each follow twist and waggle their way into each others lives and create a new road completely unimaginable in the moments preceding. We get carried along the new road until our surroundings are better than we imagined or nothing like we wanted. The once-perfect dream has been twisted and bent and squeezed into something completely unrecognizable. The more we hold onto the specificity of that old vision, the more damage we do to ourselves and others.

Let go or be dragged. — Unknown

The Universe wants us to be flexible, to be open to adopting an new vision at any given time. It wants us to be less focused on travelling a specific hardened path, but open to setting ourselves out to sea and going where the current takes us. While specific goals improve us (e.g. running a marathon, learning a language, etc.), specific visions for our lives often disappoint, and in the extreme dislocate a shoulder when we refuse to let go. We have to allow the Universe its role in our life (and it will have its role).

The farmhouse did not happen. My sunlit writing studio has been replaced with the small spare bedroom at the back of the house where little light comes through the two tiny windows. The perfect spouse apparently is still lost on his way to my life, and of course, is refusing to ask for directions. Our six children look remarkably like two strong-willed dogs, sleeping on a pillow at my feet. The nearest I’ve been to a farm is when I try to grow herbs on the kitchen windowsill.

But I write. These fingers do not type wildly successful missives that have publishers clamoring to my doorstep, but they write. The crazy twisted sometimes-heartbreaking road my life has traveled did not pass through any of the places I planned, but it certainly gave me something about which to write. The family I expected did not bear the traditional names of children once scribbled on notebook paper, but are seen in the faces of the people I call friends who understand why I write. The six children I envisioned (Jane, Eric, Ana, Andrew, Sarah, and Michael) took smaller canine forms (Cookie, Murphy, Ginger, Bear, George, and Stella) who were with me on every step of the journey.

And the Universe laughed at how long it took me to figure it out.

Rita Herrmann’s days are – as she puts it, “. . . spent in the corporate world of the financial industry with dozens of hours a week knee-deep in spreadsheets . . ”  Outside of her spreadsheets, her life is much simpler, and she finds her solace in writing, which she re-discovered after some life-changing events a few years back.  You can learn more about her, and read more of her blogs at   www.RitaHerrmann.com