The Place That Doesn’t Exist Yet

“The place you fit in best doesn’t exist yet.”

I tried to process the words the woman on the phone was saying to me, even as I felt the sting of another rejection.

This time, I’d really expected to get the job. From the minute I’d read the requirements for the position, to submitting my résumé and getting an almost instantaneous response, through the interview process, and the period of waiting to hear, I believed I’d finally found my perfect fit in the traditional work world.

So, how could it be that once again I’d been rejected?

Have you ever felt the sting of rejection?

Not only did I not get the job, worse yet, I’d been told that where I belonged didn’t exist yet.

Have you ever been told that you didn’t fit in or you didn’t belong?

I wondered how it was that I existed—at least I believed I existed—yet the place where I belonged didn’t exist.

While another job rejection was certainly painful, this time it was the hiring manager’s words that got to me. They sounded surreal.

“The place you fit in best doesn’t exist yet.”

For a few days I felt lost, alone, confused, not sure what to do next.

If the place I fit in didn’t exist, what then?

What was I to do? I wondered if I’d suddenly entered the world of science fiction. Perhaps I’d become a character in a sci-fi novel waiting for the rest of my story. Maybe what I needed was some clever science fiction writer to come along and create a world around me, so I could fit in, so I could exist.

Or maybe I’d become entangled in some quantum conundrum, where I only existed in certain realms and earth wasn’t one of them.

Who do you call for help when the place you belong doesn’t exist?

A sci-fi writer?

A quantum physicist?

After losing my corporate job to downsizing a few years before, I’d been mostly ignored and rejected by the traditional work world. The few exceptions were positions with low pay, where the employees sported even lower morale.

But through it all, no one had said that the place I belonged didn’t exist yet.

This was new.

As I contemplated the idea, I began to see myself as a possibility waiting to happen, a dream of something that was on its way.

I was in a state of in-between. I was in a cocoon. My future was still in the process of emerging.

Since I wasn’t buddy-buddy with any science fiction writers or quantum physicists, I did what I always do when I don’t know what to do.

I took my questions and thoughts to the pages of my journal. I wrote. I meditated. I tapped into my own inner wellspring of wisdom and explored the rejection and those surreal words that came with it.

What I realized about the job was that at some point during the interview, I intuitively knew I wasn’t going to get it. I recalled there being a subtle shift in the energy of the conversation from interest to rote questioning, but I was holding so strongly to the belief that I wanted that job, that I needed that job that I ignored the intuitive hit.

Have you ever ignored your intuition because you didn’t want to face what it was telling you?

After some time had passed, I realized the universe was guiding me, nudging me along to where I needed to be.

I also realized that at the time those surreal words were said to me, they reflected my truth.

I was a possibility waiting to happen.

I was in the process of imagining a new future.

And it was a wonderful thing!

What better place to dream up a new story than from inside the safety of a cocoon?

Do ever feel like you’re ready to dream up a new story for yourself?

I needed a cocoon. I needed a place where I could transmute an old story that was no longer serving me into a new one that did serve me. I needed a place where I could lay low, where my imagination was free to awaken every cell in my body, where my dreams could take root, where I could go through a process of transformation.

It’s true that at times I felt challenged, even resentful, at finding myself encased in a cocoon.

I felt stuck. I wanted something to happen. I wanted to see results. I was trying my best to make things happen.

After all, I’d always heard that being productive meant seeing material results.

I hadn’t heard about the benefits of being in a state of in-between, where imagination was free to soar, where dreams took their first breaths, and where possibilities bloomed.

I hadn’t understood that sometimes things just weren’t meant to happen in the way we’d been told they should happen.

So, yes, when she’d said them, the hiring manager’s words were true. The place I fit in best didn’t exist yet.

However, I’d been given the gift of a cocoon, a safe place for transforming; the perfect place for starting a new story.

Upon emerging from the cocoon, I was ready to take action.

I was ready to create my place of belonging.

In creating the place where I fit best, I discovered that it was not some solitary realm. Instead, it was full of energy and populated with interesting characters like changemakers, dreamers, imagineers, creatives, artists, writers, and radical new storytellers.

Here’s to creating your own place of belonging,