Blog 2: Can we create our lives, or has fate already decided?

​When I was younger, I spent a lot of time wondering how I could make my mother's life better. She was miserable, really miserable, bless her heart. She's had a tough life, and she just never seemed to be able to get ahead of her demons. She had no hope for herself, and she had no hope for us.

I'd tried to convince her so many times that she and we could create anything for ourselves, change anything, start anytime, be anyone. She'd always retort in some way to the effect that, in time, I would grow up enough to understand that life was a lot harder than I thought, and those ideas would go away.

It's true, obviously, i was only a child, and I didn't have a clue what the rules of our future were, and I still don't, nobody really does. Although it felt so hard to temporarily give up on trying to prove something to her, I eventually came across the wisdom that when we are trying to help people, it's better that we try to show them than tell them. There is no vengeance to this, but I became focussed on an idea that the best thing I could do to help her, was to prove her wrong. Not for me, not for ego, not at all. But instead, because I felt that under her challenge that happiness weren't an option for everyone, that of course, she didn't want to be right at all.

Now, I was able to keep my pain for her in a silo, deciding that i had to prove those ideas to be true, to help her. As a result of that, I built a sort of opponent to my conscious. An opponent now constantly asking me, was she right? And that haunted me. The added trouble was that, for a lot of my childhood, I was deeply unhappy, and because of that, I often found myself asking fairly decisively, 'So then, you are sad now, does that mean you have arrived at your conclusion? Is unhappiness where we will stay?'. The way I made it back into what I thought was happiness, was to promise myself that I would be right, and that I would live a life I chose to create, that it was choice, not a fate. So now, it was not just about proving it for her, but I had to prove it for me, in exchange for keeping my hopes so high through all those times.

Over years, I failed more times than anyone around me seemed to come close to. Not committing to things, not being any good at things, disappointing peoples' expectations, that sort of thing. And this built a library of evidence that I could not create what I wanted. On the contrary, the fact that I had managed to 'fail' at quite so many things, also meant that I was building a library of evidence that the answer was always still inconclusive, because I was creating new chances too. It was hope, that had converted into evidence, fact.

It was this I think, that taught me that living a life that involved any component of, 'what if', was already creating a level of happiness that didn't exist without it. And yet, in technicality there was no difference between somone who hadn't achieved something, and somoene who hadn't achieved it, yet. But in theory, that difference was all mine.

I decided back then, that living with a possibility, was the way I'd live and die. Even if I never arrived to whevere it was I wanted to go, to be on my way means that i have never let myself down. if i die before then, thats okay, it wasnt wrong, i just ran out of time. and the journey will have made it everything my life needed to be. the motion will have saved me. As for my mother, what I realise the reality above all is now, is that it wasnt that she couldnt create a life she wanted, but it was that she wasnt trying. and if she wasnt trying, nothing was growing. and when we dont grow, we die.

The moral is, each time i thought i had made it back into happiness, i wasnt wrong anymore (about the theory of creating my life), but i wasnt entirely right. Or rather, i wasn't permanently right. I wasn't wrong because even when i was sad, i wasnt just an unhappy person, how could i have felt happiness just some time before? and likely would again? What I was, was temporary, because no emotion is permanent, even when we break to sneeze, it goes away, even if only for a moment! Rather, I was scared, scared that her idea of reality was true. I was scared that I was unhappy, and that happiness would sometimes visit me. But, I decided one day that there would never be a permanent truth to that - like a zebra and its' stripes - I could decide that I was happy, and that sometimes unhappiness visited me. So if unhappiness was the fear that i wouldn't be okay again, it's antidote was hope, and hope was proven by returning to motion, being back on my way. I didn't have to find happiness, but it would reveal itself again when i had countered the fear by putting one foot in front of the other, so that my results remained inconclusive and so the likelihood of unhappiness, and so fear of it, was forced down.

So who was right? If I refused to allow for a possibility of the unknown, it would be true that there could be no other future for me, so her reality WAS true if i believed it. So too is the one ive chosen, the one with possibility. so, no, not everyone can create their reality, but everyone who chooses to, can. the only difference is that when you hear that decisive voice of doubt, you say right back to it, 'that doesn't have to be true,'. And so while I wasn't permanently right about our ability to create something, I was right whenever I chose to be.

the thing is, the moment we stop allowing for new possibility by no longer growing, we can convince ourselves life is only fate again. By equal measure, the moment that we begin again to grow and allow for the possibility of the unknown, we have returned to creating our life. Which means, the answer to who is right for you and me will remain inconclusive until we are gone, forever able to be redacted. And so the only truth that stands unwavering is that, it's up to you.

I say, join me. Be on your way.

- F.F.