Providence

Struck by a tiny epiphany. Got to write it down before it’s gone:

I’m always humbled and fascinated by providence. If you’re Christian you’ll be familiar with Providence with a capital P, meaning the foreseeing care or direction of God over the universe. I’m no Christian, but that concept feels familiar to me. So I’ll use it with a small caps. To me, it’s akin to abundance mindset, a stance of abundance towards the availability of resources in the world. Aka positive sum worldview.

There’s two types of providence:

• Passive providence
• Proactive providence

Passive providence is when you’re given, even though you might not have asked. Or you might have asked for it, set out an intention for it, but didn’t go out of your way to work for it. It tends to happen when you just started on a right path in life. Some call it blind luck. But it’s happened to me before.

Throw back more than 20 years ago. I went to the UK on a working holiday visa, hoping to stay there for 1 year. I didn’t know what to do, only that I needed to get out of my familiar bubble back home, to kind of find myself. You could call it a quarter life crisis perhaps. I only had enough money to survive for 3 months in London (3:1 conversion to pounds sterling was a killer!). I had to find a part time job there, or bust, and return home penniless. I looked for jobs, but didn’t spend much time actually because I was in unfamiliar ground and not as resourceful. I was bracing myself to have to wait tables in a pub, as most working holiday visa folks do. But I did send in a temp position at Discovery Channel London through a ex-colleague, because before leaving for UK I was actually working at Discovery Channel Asia. In the end, the only proper job application I sent was the one that worked out. It’s wild how lucky I was. There was 90% chance this whole adventure would fall through, but I was provided. Somehow, some way. Blind luck. Providence. Passive providence.

And then there’s proactive providence.

Here’s the universe tests you. You’re grown up now. You need to work harder. No more molly-coddling. Time for warrior mode, but in a good way.

I feel like this is where I am right now. No more passive gifts. I’m no longer a baby, spirituality-wise. The next stage of inner growth calls for hard work. No blind luck, or random chances. It’s not enough to just set intentions and call it a day. I got to plough through uphill through blood, sweat and tears. But with enough tilling the soil of luck surface area, you get the right opportunities. They are hard won, because right now any inner growth has to be hard won or it won’t matter. But if I really take the effort to build, ship and launch, to put myself out there, I realised more an outsized amount of opportunities come. More insight and growth happens. Yet, providence is still there, running in the background. But only activated when I act with conviction. No half-assing.

So there.
Something close to my heart that I’ve been brewing for months.

Passive vs proactive providence.