Much of what goes on in the world moves like a double helix. No matter how irregular something may seem to you, no matter how much of a mistake you may think something is, what you see as a mistake or even a grievous error is very like a double helix following its pattern.

You may see wildness rather than pattern. You may see effrontery, yet you are seeing a magic path where a blessing is righting itself. This magic path is offering you something from one aspect of life to another, and you are in process of making an adjustment. Who can rightly call what may be a mere adjustment a grievous error? In truth, you are talking about tuning a piano. Or you are talking about fixing a window that doesn’t close properly. Or darning socks with holes in them. Is it an error to note holes in socks so that you will darn them?

What may seem like an error to you, even a great error, when looked at objectively, may be nothing more than a signal to look at your socks and mend them. It’s very possible that heretofore you simply hadn’t noticed. What you saw as an interference may well have been alerting you to pay attention. One way or another, your attention is taken from one thing to another.

When you can look at aspects of life as you look at the springing of a double helix, what catastrophe can there be?

Something is righting itself. A canoe is getting balanced, or an ocean liner is adjusting its ballast, or a lady is smoothing her hat. Human life is made of checks and balances. In life, something has gotten out of balance, and now it is adjusting itself.

The message that you are receiving often is: “Something is out of whack.” Of course, you call out of whack anything that doesn’t suit you. Nevertheless, life is suiting itself. Life is looking for a way to grow upward. As the roots of dandelions may burst through a wall, so may your life be doing. As you lift up a doormat to look for the hidden key, so is life lifting up a key to ensure that what may be imbalanced will balance. It’s like ensuring that the lame will walk, the tide will come in, you rise above your battles, or ensure that you will not kiss a toad or turn into a frog.

Even when what occurs is a commonly-recognized catastrophe, as awful or pointless as it seems to you, the catastrophe is offering something to you and something more than a hard knock. There may be an opportunity you can’t possibly see, yet there is something there for you whether you recognize it or not. Maybe you will never see. Regardless, through what occurs in life, you will grow. Like it or not, you will grow.

Don’t let anything that occurs diminish you.

If you are boxer and you lose a round, get up for the next one. If you lose a match, get ready for the next one.

Keep your eye open for opportunity you welcome, and, yet take what comes. If your mother gives you a tablespoon of paregoric, down the hatch! Even what strikes you as the end of the world, you know it isn’t. Even if you lose your house, another one may be waiting. Even when you lose your job, another one is in the wings. It’s not that you have to be a slugger. It’s that you bounce back.