July: Let’s Talk About Divine Timing

July was filled with powerful epiphanies and hard-to-believe moments. Touching on last month’s topic about reframing, I realized a powerful new way to think about professionalism. I have long accepted the words, “Time doesn’t exist”, but finally articulated an explanation that allowed me to really integrate that belief. And I don’t know if I’ve ever been more joyous.

“Professionalism” is almost a bad word for minorities. Too many of us have been programmed to interpret “be more professional" to mean “be more white”. This way of thinking doesn’t serve you. It doesn’t inspire you to envision better versions of yourself, and doesn’t aid in your pursuit of success. Instead, it is more productive to replace the word “professional” with “focused”.  It doesn’t matter what role you have nor what industry you work in, you were hired to solve a problem in some way or another. If you want to be viewed as more professional, be intentional about exemplifying the fact that you are focused on solving problems that other people care about and are actively progressing towards solutions—in as many ways as possible. I’ve written previously about how the reality you experience is directly dependent on the perspectives you choose. If you can’t see how the present moment is divine, be open to the idea that there is a more empower way of thinking than what you are currently choosing. Ask yourself, “What am I supposed to notice right now? What am I supposed to learn or take away?” I’m currently listening to an audiobook, Where You Are Is Not Who You Are by Ursula Burns, and my current chapter is titled “Don’t let the world happen to you—you happen to the world”. It feels like another example of divine timing (a “tiny miracle” as I prefer to say) that I came across this chapter just earlier today as I drove home pondering this article. Instead of worrying about what problems time will solve in the future, consider what problems you can solve right now—be that out in the world or oftentimes (usually, in my case) within yourself.

I’ve long been advised to put more effort into a dedicated speaking career, but I’ve been hesitant because of nervousness—the idea of basing my financial stability on something I am so deeply and personally connected to is scary. But as I reflected over the month of July and pieced together what all of the tiny miracles mean, it just clicked in my mind one day, “Evan you could do this.” As soon as that happened, connections and opportunities started coming out of the woodworks with essentially no additional effort on my part. Accepting that opportunities don’t come in accordance to time gives me a different layer of understanding of the word “freedom”, realizing that your potential is gated by your expectations. Opportunities come when you are truly and wholly prepared for them. Sometimes that preparedness is obvious to us in the moment, and sometimes it simply isn’t. But at least this way helps me to see a healthy path forward regardless of my circumstances. Note, people are people and times are crazy; this whole ideology is stated as if humans don’t make mistakes. So I can’t always keep this ideology front of mind, but the more I do the more true it becomes. The more I focus on being prepared for the opportunities I’m dreaming of, the sooner they appear. That’s my latest secret sauce.

It is amazing how frequently I stumble upon concepts that make no sense until they do. As I grow in my ability to express myself effectively, using new words to describe old or mundane ideas oftentimes reveals Universal truths hiding in plain sight. Time itself is one such example. I heard the words “time doesn’t exist” long before I knew how to glean empowerment from such a thought. For starters, you are not your mind (even though most people identify as such). You are your soul watching your mind. Keanu Reeves depicts this literally in The Matrix movie series in scenes where Neo is alone in a white room with just a TV and a chair. Your mind is a tool that your soul uses to make sense of its earthly experiences. Time is a tool that your mind uses to hold discrete experiences in relation to one another; it turns disparate events into cohesive stories that we use to form assumptions, conclusions, and predictions. Time only exists in your mind, and while it is an aspect of every experience it has no direct control over what you experience. This idea of time not existing sounds crazy until you ponder this question—why is it that you completely lose track of time when you’re doing something you love? Because you were literally “out of your mind”.

Why does this matter? Because the future doesn’t exist until you create it, and you put a cap on your otherwise limitless potential when you allow fears about time to deter you from the path that you know is yours. Regret is living in the past and anxiety is living in the future. It’s hard to imagine the magic of being in the moment if you never learn to be truly present. I think of interns fretting over getting a job offer “before time runs out”; if left unchecked, their anxiety about the future diminishes their efficiency, productivity, and creativity in the present moment. I think of employees who allow questions about when their career will take off to distract them from realizing that they’re not presently capable of capitalizing on the opportunity they’re envisioning. I think of young men who mistake not having spent time with their fathers as reason to believe they would fail as a parent. I think of people who mistakenly think a relationship is healthy and loving simply because it has lasted a long time. If you’ve ever experienced divine timing or deja vu or miracles or prayers coming true then you know that to some degree—even if it might be small—magic is real. Life is meant to be magical. Calling the particular moments that you become aware of the Universe’s timing as “divine” suggests there are moments that aren’t divine, when the Universe or “God” isn’t at least helping. I’ve had several mentors since I started pursuing spirituality four years ago, and one of the first real lessons I had to learn was to stop calling my experiences “crazy”. The moment I simply accepted / understood tiny miracles were just a normal part of life, the more and more of them I experienced; that becomes more true seemingly every week. Note—I mentioned four years to suggest I’m still new on my journey. I might not have known for very long, but I know what I know.

I run an employee resource group (ERG) at work, and we recently changed how we manage our monthly lunch invites. At 10:30AM one day, I realized I’d completely forgotten about a lunch—hadn’t helped promote it, hadn’t reserved tables. Just after clicking send on an email to my org, I noticed the clock—10:45AM—and thought to myself, “I wonder if (name) ever reads these emails?” This particular friend, as far as I knew, worked at night. I have essentially never seen him just walking around the halls during regular work hours. But on this particular day, sometime after noon when the cafeteria at work was at its busiest, I just so happen to look to the furthest corner at just the right moment and made eye contact with this particular man. He waved and kept walking, seemingly in a meeting. We caught up days later and turns out he hadn’t received the lunch invite email. He’d gotten a new role and just so happened to be walking by that day.

That same day prior to sending the email, I noticed an alert related to my ERG with a name I didn’t recognize. Of course I looked her up in the directory and determined, “I definitely don’t know her, but I have to meet her—somehow”. Just hours later, after I had just finished reserving tables for my group’s lunch, she’s the very first person to sit down—10 minutes or so before the next. She was absolutely delightful, and days later we sat down together for a dedicated conversation. When I realized she was having to brace herself as she detailed her professional journey, I pulled her into a private office and closed the door. She shared a story that spoke to my heart immediately, and all I wanted to do was give her a hug. We shared a beautiful moment—in a way, I’ve started to think of these special moments as my version of “church”. And shared a warm hug before stepping out of the office. When we parted ways, she left and I stayed—I was already in my part of the building. But I couldn’t just go back to my desk and be normal. After waving goodbye to her, I turned around and stumbled upon two office admins—angelic humans who somehow seem to know how to handle every problem—and tell them, “I just need to stand here with you for a moment. I’m trying not to cry and can’t go back to my desk yet, not after that meeting.” One admin says, “Well, one of these cookies has your name on it!”—she had two boxes of Crumbl cookies for me to choose from. And the second admin goes on to not just notice but to compliment every detail of my outfit—and there were a lot of details. I walked away feeling energized and deeply, almost overwhelmingly, grateful in a beautifully warm way. As I walked towards my desk on the other side of the section I thought to myself, “[My ERG] has to figure out a way to share people’s stories in a more positive and amplified way. Who could I lean on to help create such an effort?” At this moment, I’m standing in front of a door that leads into a stairwell inside of a transparent-glass building. My friend’s name popped into my mind with such a jolt that my head literally spun to the right and I found myself looking him in the eyes. He’d just come down the stairs unto my floor. When he saw my jaw drop, he took his headphones out and asked if I was okay.

Go back to the day with the lunch. After lunch, a work friend who I hadn’t caught up with in a long while came to my table. When everyone else left I realized I hadn’t eaten and asked if she’d join me in a caffe in the opposite direction of our desks—they have a particular shake that I wanted. While there, I lost track of time and realized I hadn’t left early enough and would be late to my next meeting. Just before leaving the cafe I texted the person I was going to meet with, “Hey I’m going to be a few minutes late. I’m coming from the … “ Work-friend and I walk all of 20 yards outside and I look up and see a particular figure—not even this face but just his figure— and told her, “That’s the intern I’m supposed to be meeting with.” Sure enough, it is. The three of us meet up and jump right into the conversation as we walked back towards the main building at work. My ERG aims to benefit interns but our org only serves employees within a particular line of business (LOB). His team is in my LOB, but he’s a software engineer and ultimately should have been in the software-focused ERG. When I realized that I say, “hey let’s go in this door. If I ever see the president of the software ERG, it’s in this particular entryway.” Seconds later I’m disappointed that the president wasn’t standing there waiting for us; given how that day had been going, I truly expected them to be. Work-friend steps into the restroom and I keep walking with the intern. A few minutes later, Work-friend texts me, “Guess who I bumped into while washing my hands in the restroom…”

I recently had lunch with two interns—one of which I’ve mentored for the duration of their internship. #1 started griping about having not received a return offer, how they’d had three internships already and had to interview each time, and how she’d wasn’t looking forward to having to interview against for a full-time role. I challenged her to see how interviewing again could be in her favor and suggested some possible ways. Almost as soon as we’d finished that discussion, one of the members of my ERG walks past. We speak and invite him to sit with us. Turns out he’s headed to a team lunch, but sits with us “for five minutes out of respect”. I explain to him what we’d been discussing, and without hesitation he responds, “Oh I was an intern. I didn’t get a return offer. I had to interview again.” He proceeds to explain to explain how the whole experience was explicitly in his favor. We continue to talk and the general direction of what I was sharing was that life is meant to be magical, that you don’t have to let the world happen to you but happen to the world. I was helping them reframe what they’d already done in a way that makes it seem silly to doubt that their dreams are possible. As lunch was coming to an end, I recognize the man sitting at the next table as someone known for doing magic tricks and he has a deck of cards in front of him. I tell the interns, “One of us has to pull a card when we leave.” Of course I do, and he proceeds to leave us completely gobsmacked. It seemed like yet another tiny miracle, another way of the Universe telling me, “Magic is real”. Divorce the concept of divine timing as an experience that is rare or fleeting, and replace it with a belief that every moment is as special as the ones you previously referred to as “divine”. And in turn, the magic of life will become much more real.