Your Life, Your Story

There are days in our lives when it feels as if nothing is ever going to work out.  Sometimes, those days stretch into weeks or even months and the feeling becomes inescapable.  It seems as though there is no way out of the darkness that threatens to consume you, to overwhelm you, and to take you down to the bottom of the abyss from which there is no return.  When these times come upon us, and they surely will, just as the sun rises and sets each day, it is easy to despair, to blame ill-luck and bad fortune for all that has befallen you.  How is it then, that you can deal with the bleakness of these situations, how can you keep your head above the waters that threaten to engulf you?

The other day a thought occurred to me.  What if you were to imagine your life story as a novel that had already been written?  A stranger wanders over to a table in a cafe and picks up your book.  They leaf through the pages idly, stopping randomly at a certain point.  That point is now.  At this one point in the story, they know nothing of your past and nothing of your future.  All that they will know of your story is from the letters that they read, those words, lines and paragraphs that describe all that is happening right now.  The stranger in the cafe begins to read.  What will they find?  Who is the main character of your story? What type of story will they believe that they are reading - action, thriller, horror, adventure, romance, or tragedy?

This is exactly what is happening now, when you look at your own situation.  You are reading the chapter that concerns all that is occurring in the present moment.  Unlike the mysterious reader in the cafe, you already know the past, you understand perfectly all of those things, those actions, the decisions, those strange quirks and twists of fate, that brought you to where you are now and that made you into the person that you have become.  Only, just like our reader, you also do not know how the story is going to unfold, you can not know what the future holds in store for you.  If you could, would you even want to flick to the end, to read those last few lines, to discover how your story ends?

Life is like this.  You are here and it is now.  Ahead of you lies many more sentences that you must write.  How your story will unfold is not yet defined.  You hold the pen poised above the paper. The shapes that it makes are your own to make, those shapes create the letters that form the story.  There will be influences and occurrences that are out of your control, but all of these will be necessary to help you, to move the story forward.  Like now, as I write, thoughts come unbidden to my mind, that influence the direction of my writing.  So too will it be with your life, with the events that are yet to come.  You will subtly, subconsciously alter the fabric of the story, bend it to your will, to try to make it flow the way that you wish.  I know this to be true because it is exactly what I have done. I created my own situation through subconscious thought, through positioning myself so that I was more able to take the opportunities that came my way.  I was not aware of it until after, but when I looked back, it was obvious that that is what I had been doing.  I could not alter the events ahead of me, but I could ensure that I was in the best possible situation to take advantage of what came my way.  And in so doing, to reach out for my dreams.  Those events would have come to me, come at me, and perhaps I would not have been able to react in the same way.  I see this as the definition of fortune.  Fortune is the ability to see and to grasp opportunity.  No one, and I mean this truly, no one is born unlucky, no one sits with a dark cloud above their head.  That cloud is of your own making, the way that you view life.  And if you were the creator, so too can you be the destroyer.  You hold the key and you hold the power over it.  The choice is yours and yours alone.

I thought the other day about a very dark chapter in my own life, a time when I was utterly lost, when I could not see any way out of the black that had consumed me.  I was in despair.  Everything that I had cherished and loved was taken from me.  I didn't see it coming and it left me in a state of shock.  In this moment of my life, I thought I was cursed, I believed more than ever that nothing ever worked out for me, that I was unlucky, that there was little point in continuing.  Every night I went to bed, I did not want to wake up because I knew that when I did, the reality of my situation would dawn on my all over again, and it would take me down further.  Had I been in a cafe and picked up my own life story and begun reading at this point, I would have wondered how such a thing could have happened, why someone with a good heart, who always tried so hard for others, could have befallen such a disaster.  And probably, because I'm a sucker for an underdog story, I would want the foolish boy who believed so much in the promise of love, to succeed, to find his way out and to have a happy ending.  I needed that dark chapter of my life, as much as I need the light.  That particular chapter was necessary to bring me to here and to now.  All of these years later, my life has turned into a voyage of discovery and adventure.  I'm still looking for that happiness that can only be found in love, but as surely as eggs are eggs, I don't want my ending to come just yet.  I still have so much to do, so much more to write and so many stories to tell my children.   

And so do you.  There are pages upon pages of blank whiteness ahead of you.  What is behind is gone.  It is done.  Now, here you stand.  At your feet lie a shield and a sword, all around you are the sounds and sights of the raging battle that is life.  It is your decision on whether you fight for the life that you want, whether you raise your shield to ward off the blows that will surely come, whether your swing your sword to strike down your enemies that will try to stop you.  Write you own story.  Don't get caught up in the past, don't think about now.  Instead, look to your future, decide what it is that you want, picture where you wish to go, and then fight for it.  Each strike of the enemy parried by your shield forms a letter, each swing of the sword creates the sentence.  Your story, your book, your ending.  You are not defined by who you are now, you are defined by who you will become and the writing of that story is in your own hands.  So, go write it.

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Some Days The Clouds Appear

Not every day walking the one true path can be filled with carefree days of brightness and sun.  There will inevitably come days when the clouds form on the horizon, and no matter where you try to go, there is no way of evading their ever present threat.  Soon, you find that the light begins to fade as the clouds cover the sun, the gloom descends, and with it, so too comes a feeling of despair and hopelessness.  You begin to question the direction in which you are walking.  You wonder if you have made the right choices in life, made the right decisions.  And you lose sight of where you were headed.  The tendrils of doubt creep around your heart, squeezing tight, injecting an inky darkness to your thoughts.  The light fades further and with it, so too does hope for the future.  You feel alone and lost, ready to give up the fight, ready to relinquish your dreams.

The other evening, I began to feel myself becoming lost.  I started to question my purpose in life and my reasons for continuing to exist.  I asked myself what it was that I was doing and what it is that I am trying to achieve with my life.  I reasoned that I had already achieved my dreams, that I have led an incredibly blessed life, that I have reached so many of the goals that I have set for myself.  So why should I continue?  Have I not been a warrior long enough, fought enough battles, and is it not now my time to take a well earned rest?  Why should I keep pushing myself forward along my chosen path?  Why should I keep on raising my shield to fend off the blows of my enemies and why should I continue to swing my sword to strike my enemies down?  Would it not just be easier to lie down, to sleep and to rest.

The reason for these feelings for me was abundantly clear, as it so often is.  Love.  Or rather, the lack of love in my life.  You see, I thrive on love.  Love is the force that propels each and every one of us through the universe as we travel on our journeys, as we each walk our own unique path.  Love is what fuels us, and despite what Red Bull would have you believe, it is love that give us our wings and lets us fly.  In short, love is the reason and the sole purpose of our existence.  Love is life and life is love.  They are inseparable, they are one, and that is the miracle. 

For my entire life, I have struggled with love.  Everything I have ever done in my life, I am now able to see, was driven by a desire to be loved and to find love.  Ultimately though, I have always been doomed from the beginning, since it is not possible to make other people love you, not matter what you do, no matter how hard you try.  And I have tried.  From my weight gain as a young child, to my moving overseas, and even the discovery of my passion for scuba diving, love was the key driver.  Through the last year, and as a result of beginning to write this blog, I have unlocked many deep thoughts and come to the realisation of many things that were previously stored away in some dark recess of my mind.  Locked away and hidden, they may have been, but I think perhaps I always knew deep inside of their existence, but was afraid to recognise, give legitimacy to, and give voice to them, from fear of the consequences and what it would mean to my life.  Knowing and understanding what has driven my entire life is both a great comfort and an incredible curse to me.

On the one had, it gives me immense pleasure, joy and comfort to know that love is what drives me in my life.  I know that I thrive on the greatest emotion that there is, and that it pushes me forward, ever on.  I am of the belief that it is because of my deep connection with love, that I am able to connect with the world around me in a strong and meaningful way, that I am able to truly see life and the simplicity and miracles that are present in each and every moment.  I recognise love in the world and I speak plainly and openly of it, and it has given to me many unbelievable moments of pure high and elation.   

Then there is the curse.  To know that love is the driver and the very substance that gives my life so much meaning, and to comprehend and understand that my life has been deprived and is devoid of knowing love from the hearts of other people, fills me with such sadness, sorrow and despair.  When I look back over my life and realise how I gained weight as a child to attract attention and love, how I put up with name calling and teasing because I felt unworthy of anything else, how I have constantly sought out the kind of love of which I felt I deserved - the unhealthy, one-sided, unrequited kind - how I have tried so hard to make others love me and have failed time and again, and how I have spent so much of my life living alone, then the dark clouds gather to obscure the light that gives my life its balance, purpose and meaning, and I fall into deep, dark, despair.

And this is what has been happening over the last few days.  I have been caught and trapped in self-pity and remorse for my life and for my existence.  Everything has become obscured by the mists and the dense fog that appeared in my mind.  My heart wept tears of great sadness at being so alone and knowing that it has been so completely and utterly unloved.  I really did question my purpose and the point of it all.  But I understand my heart very well, since we have been ever constant companions on the path and the journey on which we embarked, so long before.  There is a reason I still raise my shield and swing my sword, there is always hope and the faith in love and life, and knowing that the darkness will lift and the sun will find its way back again.

Yesterday evening, I sat down at the beach alone, and I gazed out over the ocean, across the great expanse of ocean, towards the slowly sinking sun.  Flocks of pelicans flew across the sky, one after another and I sat and watched as a child watches, with delight, with marvel and with wonder, at the amazing sight of a great bird on the wind.  In this moment, I smiled and I laughed.  I may never have known the long-lasting, true love of a woman, but I have discovered love nonetheless.  I have discovered the love of life, I am able to see the world in simplicity and as a miracle, and for that, I shall always be grateful.  Because of that, I shall keep on walking my one true path, until one day, the other kind of love will appear.  And I know that it will.

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