You don’t always know what’s best

When I was in 7th grade I wanted Jennifer to be my girlfriend. Later, I wanted to be a rock and roll star. Neither worked out like I’d hoped. As the Rolling Stones so eloquently crooned, you can’t always get what you want. And that can be a very good thing.

Despite the disappointment and disillusionment that comes when our dreams are dashed, sometimes we find a life that’s better than anything we knew to hope for. That certainly was the case for Lee Smith. 

Lee was a big man, 6 feet, 6 inches tall, 250 pounds. His passion was playing basketball and he dreamed of playing in the NBA. When he was in high school, Lee’s basketball coach encouraged Less to join the baseball team, but Lee had no interest in baseball. Lee just wanted to play basketball. Then Lee’s brother got involved and changed the trajectory of Lee’s life.

Smith’s brother bet him $10 he couldn’t make the high school baseball team. While he wasn’t interested in baseball, he was interested in proving his brother wrong. He took the bet, made the baseball team, and became the catcher for the Castor High School Tigers.

Midway through the season, the team’s star pitcher died in a hunting accident. The coach asked Lee to take the mound and pitch the next game. In his first appearance as a pitcher, Lee pitched a no-hitter. He returned to the mound seven more times that season and finished with an 8-0 record. The rest, as they say, is history. 

The Chicago Cubs drafted Lee Smith out of high school. He played for eighteen years, had seven all-star seasons, and was unanimously voted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame. Not bad for a guy who didn’t even want to play baseball. 

For every plan and desire we have, there are an infinite number of alternative possibilities. When our plans don’t come to fruition, we often tend to interpret that as a bad thing. We assume we are missing out on the best outcome and have to settle for something less. Maybe, as Lee Smith found, the alternative is better than what we had originally planned.

When you have your dreams dashed, and you’re tempted to be dismayed, choose instead to look for the alternatives. As Alexander Graham Bell noted, “When one door closes, another one opens, but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.” 

If your life isn’t currently what you want it to be, keep exploring the possibilities. Just because your plans didn’t work out like you hoped they would, doesn’t mean that the road ahead isn’t leading somewhere amazing. We don’t always know what’s best.

Stop looking at the doors that have closed and begin looking for the new windows of opportunity. They may be better than anything planned or imagined.