Welcome to Holland

Do you ever feel like this about your life?

It's like you're planning a vacation to Italy. You're all excited. You get a whole bunch of guidebooks, you learn a few phrases in Italian so you can get around, and then it comes time to pack your backs and you heard for the airport-for Italy. Only when you land, the stewardess says 'Welcome to Holland."

You look at one another in disbelief and shock saying 'Holland?' What are you talking about? I signed up for Italy.' But they explain there's been a change of plans and you've landed in Holland, and there you must stay. 'But I don't know anything about Holland. I don't want to stay!' you say. But you do stay.

You go out and buy some new guidebooks, you learn some new phrases and you meet people you never knew existed. The important things is that you are not in a filthy, plague-infested slum full of pestilence and famine. You are simply in a different place than you had planned. It's slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy, but after you've been there a little while and you have had a chance to catch your breath, you begin to discover that Holland has windmills. Holland has tulips. Holland has Rembrandts.

But everyone else you know if busy coming and going from Italy. They're all bragging about what a great time they had there and for the rest of your life, you will say, 'Yes, that's what I had planned.' The pain of that will never, ever go away. You have to accept that pain, because the loss of that dream, the loss of that plan, is a very, very significant loss. But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you will never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely dream about Holland. -Carol Turkington

I love this story. Haven't you ever wished for something and another thing happens? But then looking back you say, wow that was really cool that that happened instead?

I was talking to a friend the other day and he used to have a great job where he made a lot of money, but he really hated his job. He always feared he was going to get fired, he feared his boss, he felt he always had to walk on eggshells. But, he got paid a lot of money. Within the few years the he worked there he told me that he became a "mean and horrible person." Which, this guy couldn't hurt a fly and he is the funniest and most lighthearted person I know. But in this time, he came to be a cold, unfriendly, unthoughtful person.

He got fired from this job. He was terrified what would happen to him and his wife and 2 kids (and soon to be 3 kids!). He found a job the same day working for barely over minimum wage. He accepted the job thinking it would only be temporary until he found something else. He ended up finding another job to work at nights so he was working about 60 hours a week to make up for the money lost. He didn't want his wife to go to work because he felt the most important thing he could give his children was a mommy to raise them.

As my friend told me this, I was so sad and felt so sorry for him. The funny thing is, he wasn't sorry or sad at all. All he could say was, "Getting fired was one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I never knew I could be so happy making half as much as I did and working twice as hard."

I was just amazed. I hope I never have to go through anything traumatic and getting fired for my job just to get on the right path. However, I know there may be a bigger, and better, plan in mind.