The Road We Could Not See: Why Some Setbacks Only Make Sense Later

A missed opportunity, rejection or goodbye can feel final while we are living through it. In his column 'From the Silence Within', Santosh Nair reflects on setbacks, uncertainty and the possibility that some roads reveal their meaning only when we look back.

There is an old Japanese saying often shared as a lesson for life: sometimes what feels like a setback is only a detour whose meaning we cannot see yet. A child misses a bus and feels unlucky. A young person is rejected and feels unwanted. Someone we love walks away and we feel abandoned. In that moment, the mind sees only one thing: what has gone wrong. It does not see the road that begins because of it. We are standing inside the event, so we cannot see what the event may become.

Think of a child who reaches a railway station and discovers that the train has already left. He may cry. His mother may say, “Wait for the next one.” But to the child, the day is already ruined. He does not know that the next train may take him to a different platform, a different meeting or simply a different experience. Adults are not very different. We grow older, but when a door closes, we still stand in front of it asking why it happened. We rarely ask what road has opened because that door closed.

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An event is not finished when it........

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