TOTAL READ TIME: 3.5 Minutes

Original hand-drawn blueprint of my kitchen remodel in 2006.
© Kathy J. Sotak

I’ll never forget the day 212 boxes dropped in our driveway. It was in 2006, when my husband Jeff and I installed a new kitchen. As newlyweds it was our first marital test: can we install an IKEA kitchen and still remain life partners? (For those unfamiliar with IKEA furniture, it comes with “pictures only” instruction sets, frequent missing parts and periodic panic attacks.)

A lot needed to happen before we could place the cabinet order. I watched my workflow, making note of steps and movements per job function. This led to small but important layout decisions. After I got a feel for the imaginary new space, I drew. We built the kitchen to this very specification, as pictured above. Nothing was altered from my design once it was drawn, then built.

I wish life was instructive like that: we imagine it, build it and it stays put – just like cabinets, sinks and stoves. We set goals, have visions and dream a future that we then create. We have a plan for our lives. The biggest question is: what happens when our plan gets derailed? When the future takes a sharp turn?

The past few weeks I’ve had close friends hurting. I had a co-worker pass away. A Mother dying. Other friends who are walking through turbulent territory, not sure where its leading. They have no choice but to walk their path. It’s shifting sand, and they have to focus on one step at a time, trusting they will be okay.

My blueprint has been dismantled, too. After I lost my first son in 2009, everything was amplified. Every input was tenfold as it entered tender territory. Why couldn’t the rude retail store clerk see that I was pregnant just the day before? For a long time I felt like I was a blinking neon sign of suffering, but no – suffering is invisible.

The only blueprint that matters is the one we co-create in human relationships. We need each other to walk through this life. Nothing is guaranteed. No one walks through this life unhurt and without turbulence. We must be gentle with each other – both friends and strangers. We can’t see what is blinking on their invisible neon signs.

I was reminded via Pam Gregory about the powerful effects of the heart and how we can “infect” others with lovingkindness. The heart’s electromagnetic toroidal field is 5,000 times larger than the brain, and has 40,000 neurons. When we are in positive coherence with emotions like love, peace and gratitude, we expand our heart’s toroidal field and we can indeed infect other people with that frequency – they catch our love. (Learn more about heart coherence at https://www.heartmath.org)

As we draw our individual blueprints for life, imagine that we extend strong support beams for each other. Perhaps together is the way we walk through patches of shifting sand.