A couple of weeks ago, as I was on my way to the gym, I was stopped at a normally busy intersection, which was not busy at all that morning. As I waited for the light to change, I happened to look across the street and notice a ball sitting next to the curb. It looked like it had seen better days. It was dirty and a little beat up.
I noticed it but didn’t think anything of it…until it started rolling. On its own. No one around either on the road or the sidewalk near where it was sitting. No wind. Not even a slight breeze. It started rolling. Toward me.
It rolled into the center of the intersection and, just as suddenly and without explanation as it had started rolling, it stopped. Just stopped and sat in the middle of the intersection. What?? An inanimate body at rest suddenly became an inanimate body in motion without being (noticeably) acted on by some sort of external force…Science would argue that’s impossible. And I rarely argue with science. Even so, it was a notable occurrence and made me stop and wonder if there was a message there for me.
The light changed and I drove past it, heading on my way. By the time I passed through the intersection again, on my way home, I had forgotten about it so I didn’t think to look for it. But later in the day, while I was on Zoom with my cohort from Shari Goodwin’s 2025 Inspired Leadership Mastermind, I remembered it and told the story to the group. I’m grateful for the blend of practicality and magic that Shari fosters and the group embraces, so I asked them “what do you think that was about?”
Shari asked me what I had been thinking about at the time…hmmm…I was listening to a podcast, and actually LISTENING to it, it wasn’t just on in the background. I was totally absorbed in the content around the topic of “how to heal when everything falls apart” (Marie Forleo interviewing Suleika Jaouad.) I actually remember having to pause it and rewind a bit when I got distracted by the ball…I said I would go back and see if I could recall what was being discussed while I was waiting at that intersection.
Then one of my fellow Masterminders piped up. “The ball is YOU!!!” she cried. I can’t recall her exact words, but she said something to the effect that I am at a crossroads, in the middle of an intersection in my life, and I needed to “be the ball” as they say in sports. Get in motion and see where rolling with it takes me. (She also said something about the ball being old and beat up after she said the ball was me, but I’m going to let that slide…accurate as it may be.)
I chewed on that long and hard after the discussion. It’s a pretty on the nose metaphor for where I am, actually. But there was something more. What exactly was I thinking about before the ball put itself in motion? I went back to the podcast and read through the transcript. I actually remember what the topic was right before I got to the stop light* so I could find at least a possibility of what was said then. I got there and read this: “….not knowing what the hell you’re doing is awesome…the act of not knowing what the hell you’re doing just allows you to be like, let’s do this, let’s go.”
It’s true. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing right now. I haven’t seen that as awesome, to be honest. But thinking about how I don’t know what I’m doing right now, and associating that with being the ball, felt good. It felt like a reminder that I have choices on which direction to go during this intersection in my life. Yes, I can make decisions and take action, but I am also free to roll with life and not know exactly which way to go.
I think I have defaulted to being the ball on the curb lately because I don’t know what’s next, and my mind says if I don’t know, I can’t move. But I can. If that ball can move on its own out of the gutter and into the middle of the road to face its uncertain fate, I can certainly get up and engage with the world and maybe even enjoy not knowing what the hell I’m doing…
*My mind does this sometimes – associates a visual context clue in with auditory input. It’s how I did so well on some tests in school. Once in a while, I could go back in my mind and see and hear what the teacher was writing on the board and saying at the time he or she was talking about the topic on the test (usually those involved stories or events – like history. Never once happened for science or math. Figures.) It still happens from time to time when I am absorbed in content while doing something else, like driving.
What Will Transpire? 
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