I am looking forward to the conclusion of my training as a therapist. The final residential session will have been completed this month and I will in all probability have amassed the required number of trainee hours with my clients by the end of the year. I have a sense of accomplishment but also of anticipation. What next? As has been suggested by someone close to me, a break would be a very good idea, preferably back in what still counts as my Irish homeland. But after that?
I am bound to a degree by my age. There are only so many more years before Anno Domini kicks in. But there will be opportunities aplenty in the next decade to specialise in niches where I feel that I can be helpful. I have thoroughly enjoyed my Thursdays when I have driven to another part of Hertfordshire and undertaken counselling in a school. It brings back rich memories of my own teaching days of course, so who knows if working with young people will open up again.
I am aware of the remarkable role played in life by what appear to be chance encounters. Recently I damaged my knee and could not drive my car so I had to take a taxi to a venue where I was undertaking some training in grief counselling. I was all set to take a taxi back when I was told of someone else who was on the course; she was returning in my direction and offered a lift. During the twenty minutes of that journey there was a remarkable encounter between the two of us, centring on grief and bereavement. Losses were shared and inspiring book-titles shared. If my leg had been pain-free, that encounter would never have occurred. Such is the web of circumstance that shapes us all.
I sometimes ponder how and why I ended up applying for certain jobs or moving to certain houses in particular towns. Out of the friendships I made there, enduring relationships have been built. Of course my pastor father would have believed that that unforeseen and tangled web is constructed and overseen by God and that if we commit ourselves to his will then the path we take will be the right one. I struggle with such a firm conviction. But I do feel that there are synchronous elements to differing events that befall us and that we must be on the lookout for them. As a spiritual teacher once said to me – ‘Never overlook the coincidences in your own life’.
There is a path through the woods not far from where I live. The route is overshadowed by tall trees and there is a gateway by which I could enter. It seems to me, each time I walk past, that I ought to take a walk down that path and see what lies there. If there is a fork in the path I will have to choose one or the other. No doubt each one will lead me somewhere close enough to home to feel like a reasonable choice. But life is a path with more challenging and life-changing forks in the road than this. I aim to help my clients with the emotional weight of those forks in the road, whether in the past, the present or the future. But I will need to be aware of the unexpected shapes of my own journey.
