there is one thing we can draw from where we are now and where we were then, it is that the unimaginable is ordinary, that the way forward is almost never a straight line you can glance down but a convoluted path of surprises, gifts, and afflictions you prepare for by accepting your blind spots as well as your intuitions.

I have stopped asking people for directions to places they’ve never been. There is no map. We are all pioneers.

unknown. Only when he has the courage to step into the darkness, as O’Donohue depicts it, does the light to guide him to the next step reveal itself.