The most meaningful quote in my life came from Steve Jobs when he addressed the graduating class at Stanford University in 2005. He said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
Jobs’ quote resonated so much that I placed a portion of it at the beginning of my documentary film The Celiac Project. The meaning of the quote to me is that your life is going to throw you some unexpected curve balls. Only in hindsight can you understand why it was you went through them. You need to get to a point that you trust that there will be a meaning and a purpose to these events. It makes the words all the more inspiring that they came from an individual who never graduated college, was seen as one of the most visionary people in the history of the world, got fired at one point from the company that he founded, and turned it around to be considered one of the great geniuses of our time. Jobs was taken from the earth far too early.
My life is not incredibly similar to that of Steve Jobs, but I have experienced a fair share of turbulence. Much of the disharmony in my life came about because of an undiagnosed health condition that I believe punctuated my entire life. At 40 I had the great luck to find a doctor who understood celiac disease and the storm that was my entire life began to subside, leading me to a long-awaited clarity I’d never known.
Life is never a straight line however, and I still find myself dealing with the aftermath and the damage that was created by feeding myself “poison” all of my life. The good news is that I am now able to start connecting those dots and getting my life back together. My hope with this blog, the documentary and podcast is that my story as well as others who have shared their stories with me will help you, whether you have celiac disease or not.
Thank you for reading!