If you had a time machine and could send just one message
to your past self, what would it say?
If I had a time machine and could send just one message to my younger self, it would be: Trust the hunch.
Not because every instinct is right, or because careful thought does not matter. But some of the most important things in my life began before I fully understood why they mattered.
I started my doctorate because I had an idea I wanted to explore. I could see something there, even if I could not yet explain where it would lead. The process itself opened possibilities I could not have predicted.
Much of my working life has been like that. Mathematics, computer programming, ministry, theological education, college leadership — it hardly looks like a carefully designed career path. At various points, I simply saw a possibility and followed it. Looking backwards, there is more coherence than I could ever have seen looking forwards. Perhaps we sometimes misunderstand how knowledge works. We imagine that first we understand, then decide, then act. But often we act, pay attention, and gradually understand. Doing becomes a way of knowing.
That is also how I write. I often begin with little more than a thought or a hunch. I do not always know what I think until I start writing.
The same is true of people and projects. You begin something, create an opportunity, start a conversation, and you cannot know what will grow from it. Sometimes years later you glimpse the fruit.
None of this means trusting every impulse. A hunch still needs testing. Sometimes you are wrong and need to change direction. But waiting for certainty is another matter. Certainty is often unavailable.
So I would tell my younger self: Trust the hunch enough to begin. You will understand some things only by doing them.
And perhaps I would add one final sentence: Your life will make more sense looking backwards than it does looking forwards. Don’t mistake the absence of a map for the absence of a way.
The Afterword 
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