Email support

About two years ago one of my good friends moved to New York to follow her passion for modern dance. On August 30, 2009 she wrote to me in an email:

I cannot tell you how much it made my day to get your message this morning...I woke up for the first time in my new apartment, and reality had hit...BIG TIME...that reality that I don't have a job, that I am here "alone" and that although I am confident that I am exactly where God needs me right now, I am scared to death.  

Then on October 24, 2009 she wrote in an update:

I wanted to let you know, that the days of passing out fliers on a street corner are done, and that starting Monday I will no longer be collecting pennies off of the subway car floors to make my rent... I feel so grateful to have the opportunity to work and support myself, so though it looks different than I had originally hoped, I am confident that this step is yet another step towards the fulfillment of some goal - one that I cannot even clearly define.

Exactly one year later, on August 30, 2010 I woke up in New York for the first time to start my new job and guess who greeted me when I arrived at my hotel the night before... She hugged me as I broke down over the reality of the decision I had made and took me to dinner to celebrate. Today she sent me an email to pass along this quote:

"When we think that something is going to bring us pleasure, we don’t know what’s really going to happen. When we think something is going to give us misery, we don’t know. Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all. We try to do what we think is going to help. But we don’t know. We never know if we’re going to fall flat or sit up tall. When there’s a big disappointment, we don’t know if that’s the end of the story. It may be just the beginning of a great adventure. Life is like that. We don’t know anything. We call something bad; we call it good. But really we just don’t know."  -Pema Chodron

I've always felt that this particular friend and I are deeply connected on a soulful and spiritual level, and while we often go extended periods of time without communicating, we have an uncanny history of emailing or calling at exactly the right time. Fortunately, we're neighbors now.