There is no debate necessary about free will and destiny, about which one is more powerful and relevant. Actually, both are an integral part of your Life. Destiny is Life throwing situations at you. Free will is the choice you exercise in response. Consider this example. You are walking on the road on a rainy day and a motorist splashes muddy water on you while speeding past. Now, that’s a Life event, that’s destiny, happening to you, at a very trivial level. If you get angry, unhappy, frustrated and point your middle finger at the motorist, that’s free will. Or, after overcoming the shock, you shrug your shoulders before walking away quietly, that is free will too. So, in every situation in Life, destiny and free will interplay constantly. You can’t control Life, you can’t control destiny. And only one of your free will choices in a given situation can lead you to Happiness. Intelligent living is knowing what that choice is, and exercising it, every single time!
Understand a simple truth about Life: you have to go through what you have to go through! No amount of praying or wishing can change what you have to, and will, experience in Life. So, stop resisting anything that you dislike and are faced with. The role of a crisis is to make you stronger, wiser and, interestingly, happy. Look back at all that you have been through and you will find that you are better from your experiences. So, why be bitter about whatever’s happening to you now? Embrace your current reality, accept it as your new normal, and keep doing what you can possibly do each given day. Over time, you will find yourself soaked in equanimity, no matter how hard the going is!
I can do this… I can start over. I can save my own life and I’m never going to be alone as long as I have stars to wish on and people to still love.
Let this time in your life cut you open and drain all of the things that are holding you back. I’m going to help you forgive the things that you won’t let yourself forget.
For so many years, I couldn’t understand why every time I thought that someone finally loved me, like… for real, they would eventually turn to vapor. Every person whom I’ve ever loved is trapped inside of my chest. I’ve breathed all of them in so deeply that I’ve nearly choked and died on every soul that I’ve ever given myself to.
I look out into the water and up deep into the stars. I beg the sparkling lanterns of light to cure me of myself — my past and the kaleidoscope of mistakes, failures and wrong turns that have stacked unbearable regret upon my shoulders.
Does our purpose on Earth directly link to the people whom we end up meeting? Are our relationships and experiences actually the required dots that connect and then lead us to our ultimate destinies?
I fantasize the night sky to be like a cosmic blue print of my life as I close my eyes and unbutton my heart…. just in case anyone up there is listening.
Something, somewhere, knows what’s best for me and promises to keep sending me people and experiences to light my way as long as I live in gratitude and keep paying attention to the signs.
I’ve grown up defined by this desperate, undeniable, ‘can’t breathe’ kind of space inside of myself and I’m afraid that the diagnosis is fatal.
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. --as quoted in THE RIVER OF WINGED DREAMS
I’ve always seen this in you, ever since you were a little girl — this hunger to love other people into their highest selves and it’s what has made me irreversibly and just so forever in love with you.