Connecting the Dots…
In an often quoted commencement speech Steve Jobs advised:
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well worn path; and that will make all the difference.”
I read Walter Isaacson’s “Steve Jobs” around the time of my first trip to San Diego [really, Encinitas], California. The two remain connected in my memory.
The picture below is from that first trip. I was visiting a friend, who had moved to Cali via Hawaii after a relationship there went south. That trip was booked so I could spend some time with her and take a breather from sometimes claustrophobic Jacksonville Beach (aka “Jax Beach”), Florida where I was living. I didn’t exactly know where I was going. I had heard of San Diego, but it was blurred with the rest of southern California in my mind. I had never heard of surfy Encinitas and didn’t even know that was where my friend lived and I’d be staying.
On the plane ride from Jax to San Diego, I had hastily developed three trip goals: see a sunset, go on a hike, and eat seafood. With the help of my friend, I managed the check them all off! We saw our first sunset during a Thursday night Matt Costa concert at Birch Aquarium – incredible even with the time change induced sleepiness!
The following day, a Friday night, we planned to get a few drinks at Wine Steals, a local restaurant/bar, and then walk across the street to watch a beach front sunset. But you know how bars go, you start talking…and all of a sudden, the sun as slithering down towards the horizon. Aaaaaah…time to go!
My friend decided it was not time to go and opted to stay at the bar. I, on the other hand, headed off in the direction of the setting sun. In a rush, I crossed some railroad tracks at an inopportune location and tracked a fence until I found an access point. I caught the sunset from the top of the cliff overlooking the beach.
I’ve since crossed those tracks in Cardiff-by-the-Sea countless times and have run, surfed, and sunned on the beach below those cliffs an equal number of times. But at the time, I had no concept of where I was, no intention of moving to California, and no inkling that the people I’d meet on that trip – in bars, in passing – would become an important part of my life over the next few years.
Crossing the Tracks to Catch the Sunset in Cardiff by the Sea, August 2013.
Three months later I found myself packing up my CRV and moving across the country to Encinitas, California (Leucadia) with little more than faith that the dots would connect. And they did. Now, as I prepare to take some new leaps of faith, I hope that they will again.
