The Universe is Sassy: What Mount Major Taught Me About Trust

Before we started, I led the group through a short meditation, one built around curiosity and reflection, inviting each person to hold a decision they'd been struggling with and see what the trail might reflect back to them.

At our first break, as we started to ascend the Straightback Loop towards Mount Major in Alton, NH, I remember thinking: huh, there's been no silence yet. We'd been walking for a while and the conversation hadn't stopped once.

So I said something to the group. I told them that as we started climbing, they might feel the need to get quieter (that the incline might naturally pull us into more reflective, individual space) and that it could be a good time to turn inward.

AND that is not even close to what happened.

If anything, talking is what got people up the mountain. I think it was their motivation, the thing that kept one foot moving in front of the other. Angel and I actually said it out loud a few times on the harder sections: just focus on the next stump, the next log, the next marker on the trail. Get there. Then look for the next one. Conversation was doing the same thing for the group that those visual markers were doing for their legs. It gave them something immediate to focus on instead of the whole mountain at once.

I planned for quiet. Trust asked for something else entirely.

This isn't a new lesson for me, and it's not even a new blog topic for me...I've written about expectation and attachment before. It keeps circling back anyway (apparently I need to keep relearning it, or maybe I just need new evidence each time).

I have a saying I use constantly, with myself and with clients: "The Universe is Sassy." What we think we want, or plan for, or hope will happen, isn't always what's actually for our highest good. Sometimes it's better than what we could have imagined ourselves, we just can't always see that in the moment because we're too busy being attached to the plan we made.

That's what a mountain actually teaches you. You don't get to see the whole trail at once. You get the next stump…the next log... the next turn. And you find out what you needed (quiet, or connection, or something else entirely) only by moving through it, not by planning it in advance.

I'm curious for you reading this: where in your own life have you planned for one thing and trust handed you something completely different, something that turned out to be exactly what you needed?

(And speaking of Sassy Universe things...I may have a small batch of "The Universe is Sassy" stickers on their way to me. If you want one, drop a comment below and I'll pick a few of you to send one to.)