The Day the Universe Stopped Being Subtle
We all receive signs, but some don’t notice them. People call them different things: signs from the universe or signs from God. Both terms make sense to me, but the writer in me wanted something I could call my own. Over the last few years, I’ve started thinking of them as cosmic signposts, but I still call them signs for short.
The signs are usually subtle. But occasionally, they’re akin to the old animated cartoons where a character stomps a foot on the steel tines of a rake to get smacked in the face with the wooden handle. I’ve felt this.
Some swear the signs don’t exist, that we create meaning where there is none. That’s fine with me. Let them travel life with whatever tools work for them. I’ll take all the cosmic help I can get. Noticing the signs mostly takes a focus on the present. Pay closer attention to your everyday surroundings, and it’s difficult not to see them.
I’ve had a steady stream since a particular day when several cosmic signs barraged me during an important decision in my life. What were these successive cosmic signposts? A little backstory first.
During a period of my flight training, fear cropped up and worked me over. It pummeled me into a dark place where I considered taking the safe way out by quitting. I couldn’t shake the image of a mangled airplane tail sticking out of scorched earth.
I worried more about my family than I did myself. As a father with young kids at home, I feared a stupid mistake would force them to grow up without me. Student pilots fly solo many times before earning a license, and this particular student had an overactive imagination—not helpful on long solo flights. I pictured engine-outs, fast-moving thunderstorms, and wings ripping off.
On the day the cosmic signposts arrived, I’d been seriously considering dropping my dream of learning to fly. Several months slid by without scheduling lessons, primarily because of a conversation with a new manager the parent company had brought in. He had grandkids and knew I had young boys with another on the way. Maybe he had deep-rooted fears himself, but whatever the reason for what he said, I realize now that it was his issue, not mine. He not only added fertilizer to the seeds of doubt within me, it felt as if he used a pitchfork to spike them deep.
“Why do you want to learn to fly now?” he said, reclining behind his big desk. “Boys need their dad. You won’t do them any good if you kill yourself in a plane.”
Unknowingly, he’d found my Achilles heel. His words made me feel selfish, convinced I was a horrible dad tempting fate. The conversation shadowed me for months, nipping at the back of my brain. I knew I had to decide. Would I accept the risk and fly, or choose safety and give up? It kept me up at night.
After consecutive restless nights lying in bed, I couldn’t stand the endless analysis any longer, looking at the decision from every angle. I didn’t want my boys to grow up without me, but I also didn’t want them to believe it was okay to quit in pursuit of your dream. I realized then that some decisions aren’t meant to be analyzed. Some decisions must be made on faith. At that moment, I let go and sent a request into the universe, “If I’m meant to learn to fly, please give me a sign.”
I stared into the dark, listening for anything beyond the heavy silence.
Nothing.
Yet the high-tension wires within me slackened anyway. I relaxed, and my body sank deeper into bed. One thought floated through my brain before sleep took me. Maybe the sign will come tomorrow.
The next day, I didn’t get one sign. I received four.
The first happened when I parked downtown to drop a package off. Scooping a random quarter from the change holder without examining it beforehand, I hurried to the parking meter to insert it.
The coin was more than halfway in when something clicked. I pinched the coin’s rim at the last second before it dropped, then eased it most of the way out.
Beyond my thumb’s edge, the Wright Flyer’s first flight showed Wilbur Wright watching on in what must have been sheer exhilaration as his brother flew. That scene on the back of the North Carolina quarter was perfectly aligned, right-side up and facing me at the edge of the slot, almost as if I’d pre-positioned it beforehand.
Cosmic sign or happenstance?
The late-night request flashed through my head. Was this my sign? If so, it seemed weak, like wishful thinking. Still, I couldn’t let the quarter plink into the meter’s belly. I pulled it out instead to pocket it as I plucked a replacement from the car.
After dropping off the package, I drove to my gym, mulling the quarter’s significance. Once there, doubt overshadowed the supposed sign. But during the workout, my mind still pondered it as I stared into space between sets. Halfway through my workout routine, a man appeared before me as I sat in the shoulder machine.
“You’re taking flying lessons at Air Harbor, aren’t you?”
I recognized him as a pilot from the airport. We’d met months prior when I’d started the lessons. I hadn’t seen him there since, and never at the gym.
“I am,” I replied.
He asked me how the lessons were going. I told him they were going well. The truth was, the lessons were going great, but they weren't the problem. Controlling my fears was the problem, but I didn’t volunteer that.
We continued the conversation, discussing the airfield and the people we knew there. Before he moved on to finish his workout, he looked me directly in the eyes and said, “When you get your license, you’ll love it. Best thing I ever did. No greater feeling than flying yourself.”
I sat there astonished, knowing I’d received a sign this time. Straight ahead, beyond the space he’d just vacated, was a large archway into a group exercise room. The participants were faced outward, performing a choreographed move where they had turned toward me. The woman closest to me glanced my way, then spun with the class to face the instructor. The back of her shirt read, “Don’t let fear stand in the way of your dreams.”
She then grapevined to the left to reveal the back of another woman. Her shirt read, “Living is the only thing worth dying for.”
I’m not making this up.
I know that shirts with clever, motivational sayings are plentiful in gyms. Still, the perfect alignment and rapid-fire precision of those two signs right after the pilot’s message was otherworldly. No one will convince me it wasn’t the universe putting an exclamation point on the Wright Flyer sign, especially after I had dared to think it a weak one.
When I left the gym, a phone call to my instructor locked in my next lesson. Done deal. I’ve never looked back.
Since that day, with my awareness heightened, cosmic reminders have appeared often. I write them down to keep them fresh, to feel their electric charge whenever I need a jolt. Their power fades if you’re not careful, and once enough time passes, it’s too easy to decide they weren’t signs at all. But even when the charm seeps away, I know more will come. These days, instead of wondering if I’ll get a sign, I wonder when.
Keeping the North Carolina coin for a while also reminded me. It stayed snugly in my pocket as a good luck token on every flight I made until I earned my pilot’s certificate. After that, I released it back into the universe, hoping it might become magical for someone else.
What cosmic signposts have guided you? Do they show up regularly, or do you file them next to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? If you’ve never seen one, the rush of life may have made them easy to miss.
Slow down. Open your mind. They will come. Or, the next time a hard decision keeps you up at night, ask for a sign. But brace yourself. Cosmic signposts can arrive with the force of a rake handle to the face.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
If you've ever asked for a sign and then wondered whether you'd really gotten one, you'll find more of that in the novel I wrote. Flying Colors is the story of a man who stops waiting for his real life to begin and learns to trust the signposts that lead him back to the things he loved in his youth. The opening chapters are free in the footer below.
