How sure are you?
A while ago I went to my friend’s wedding that happened in a big park in Curitiba, south Brazil. I was super excited about this ceremony, it was a beautiful sunny and warm day.
The park was reasonably big and dense with trees, and the couple chose a spot somewhere in the park to get married. I mean, they weren’t getting married in the main chapel, so finding the place where the wedding was going to happen wasn’t super straightforward.
The experience of getting to the ceremony was a big part of my memory of that day. I was following my own instincts of where the wedding was going to be, walking in the middle of the bushes and sometimes crossing with other guests.
Some guests I found along the way seemed more confident about the path they were pursuing — “I am pretty sure it’s this way” — and I started to follow them.
We would cross with other guests heading a different way, and if they seemed slightly more confident than us, we would drop our ‘certain path’ to follow them.
Time was passing, and I started to feel comfortable with the fact that we were all lost. This brought me a sense of confidence in the middle of our lost group, and then, suddenly, people started following me.
And there I was, being followed by my group of very lost people that would see other very lost guests, point at me and say: “He knows where it is, come follow him too!”
I remember clearly feeling that I had figured out something profound about work, about life, about myself.
No one really knows precisely where the “wedding” is, we are following some sort of map drawn by someone that was based on their own walking experiences, or we follow people that seem a bit more confident than us about what path to follow. Even though inside their own heads most people we follow are as uncertain about the way they are following as we are, maybe most of them are even just holding on enough until someone else shows up to take their place leading the way.
The walk itself, the hints and exciting things you see along the way, and the people you meet is what it makes it all fun I reckon.
I am not sure.
I might start writing more about stuff and posting here more often.
Thanks Melissa Eastabrook for helping me make my thoughts somehow readable.
