Recently, I had an interesting epiphany.  It’s strange how the universe seems to provide messages that can be construed as either cryptic or unambiguous.  However, no matter how the messaging is ultimately interpreted, it is still, nonetheless, a sign.  Now some don’t believe in that sort of unconventional thinking, therefore, it is often quickly dismissed and replaced by the more stereotypical and ordinary comforts of familiarity.  And yet, it leads one to wonder if it is the universe providing the signs or if it is intuition that is inherently persistent.  As we are programmed to diminish those “signs” by labelling them as erroneous thereby making them instantly unimportant and trivial. Today, it would seem that it is the universe that is desperately trying to get our collective attention.  Hurling challenges, some of pandemic proportion, one after the other providing compelling evidence that it does not intend to stop any time soon.  We can blame it on one challenging year that rolled into another, or we can simply rely on the prevailing standby of just blaming others for any unsolicited difficulties that become wedged between us and our version of normalcy.  Or.  We can do the unthinkable and consider the possibility that we are controlling all of it. My recent epiphany, as they often do, was figuratively handed to me.  Being an intrinsically unconventional thinker, I accepted the message that was actually meant to be delivered by UPS, however, I have surmised, that it was very likely the universe that was speaking to me.  I run.   Probably not very well, yet I still find myself fully dedicated to a sport that has often and invariably left me sidelined holding a bottle of ibuprofen in one hand while my other hand applies ice to my elevated feet as I nurse, again, chronic foot injuries. It’s a familiar pattern for me.  I know what I should and shouldn’t do to avoid a painful injury, and yet, I continue to repeat the pattern that more often than not renders me incapable of walking let alone running.  If you are also a runner, you get it.  If you are not a runner then it might be difficult to explain that even though running is physically demanding, it is still somehow mentally fulfilling, until of course it’s not, which is why breaking up with it is complicated.  Over many years, I’ve narrowed down all of my chronic foot problems to my running shoes which finally brings us to my long-awaited epiphany.  As I scoured the internet for the best running shoes money can buy on a budget for an assist in combatting my newest injury, I landed on a shoe that seemed to fit the bill well enough.  So.  Under the dueling pressure of both anxiety from not running and a swollen and throbbing tendon gifted to me courtesy of running, I pulled the proverbial trigger and purchased the magical running shoes that would, without a doubt, get me quickly back on the road pain-free.  But alas, it would seem that the universe had other ideas. Let me just save some time and cut to the extraordinarily anticlimactic chase.  It’s hard to know whether it was the universe’s cosmic messaging system or my generally reliable intuition that was monumentally malfunctioning, but the magical running shoes seem to have been directionally challenged en route to my house.  This, of course, prolonged my inability to participate in the sport that I rely upon for the primary purpose of sanity.  With my anxiety now fully peaked, I slowly limped to the door to see if the UPS driver had managed to drop something on my front porch without my trusty guard dog hearing.  He had not.  And as any frantically logical person would naturally conclude, there had to be some kind of hidden message in the lack of delivery.  Perhaps it was the universe’s way of forcing me to break free of my familiar pattern by preventing me from running and doing further damage.  No shoes, no run.  But without knowing for sure exactly what UPS and the universe were playing at, I grabbed my computer and carefully reviewed my order to see if I could locate my undelivered, and presumably lost, shoes.   And there it was.  In the order’s delivery history on the vendor’s website, it stated that the shoes were delivered, however, they were ‘hidden in a safe place’.  Truth be told, and at this point you can well imagine, I’m not all that interested, or even physically capable, in playing hide and seek.  The shoes were allegedly hidden so well that they could not be found only to later be revealed that they were, in fact, never really even delivered.    It begs a confounding question that has nothing to do with running or even my injured feet for that matter, and that is what else could possibly be hiding in ‘a safe place’ with the expectation of never being found? Without realizing it, we probably already know the answer to that question.  Dr. Seuss said, “Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.”  That’s probably true, however, there is no doubt that we, as a society, have become equally proficient at mucking up the answers just as skillfully as the questions themselves.  Besides my running shoes — which, in case you were wondering, eventually did show up only to be quickly sent back due in large part to the fact that they were the equivalent of strapping two stiff boards to my already compromised feet – I have been introspectively distracted by the recent surge in what has been coined ‘cancel culture’.  It doesn’t really matter what side of this particular fence you decide to secure your post, one strong gust of wind and all of the posts are collapsing anyway.  Like most things, we get so caught up in the protest that oftentimes we don’t remember or even know what the fight is really about.  Dr. Seuss said, “You’ll be sort of …