I think we can easily rule out destiny, fate, karma and the like… But are we really in control of our lives, at the front helm of our makeship destination? Or are we just a product of consequence?
To me, life is fighting to catch your breath in the middle of the ocean. Just as you reach the surface down crashes another wave forcing you further from your goal of dry land. For most of us we have well and truly fallen off the side of our ships, with the exception of a couple life rafts that float by to bestow a moment of peace before the next onslaught of waves. We spend the majority of our time failing to clamber back on board as we witness every other soul cruise by in their luxury yachts.
I’m speaking of course, relatively and not in the sense of a third world country but in comparison to our own expectation in this… dare I say it, society.
Statistically speaking, in life, is it not impossible to receive negative experience after negative experience? Blow after blow, wave after wave without the release of a positive response, an opposite reaction to balance the apposing forces? Think of a game of chance like the lotto, or rolling a die or even triggering your music collection to play songs randomly. Would you not declare that it is impossible to have the winning lotto numbers be won from the same store, in the same town ten times in a row? Or that you constantly receive the number 1 every time you roll that die? Or that one single song out of thousands keeps being chosen and played over and over, in spite of the rest? It is this anomaly that enforces the law of randomness. If something is to be proven random, then we must accept that the same situation can occur over and over again, for that act in itself is outlandishly random.
So it seems, our lives, being a haphazard cause of events, can remain trapped beneath the suffocating water-filled relapses with us curled in darkness hoping that that day comes when ‘heads’ land face up. Various few say that through exertion we can each ‘control’ our lives and steer it in the direction of our purpose. However this seems, time and time again about finding that job, making those millions but never about real happiness. Notice I didn’t say true happiness, that concept we are indoctrinated into believing fallible, just like the idea of control. I’m talking about a real, realistic, plausible happiness.
At this point we would look back in our lives, to the past week, year or entire life to find those small glimmering exceptions of contentment. Where times weren’t so bad, to suck every ounce of stillness from those pearls of elation till we remember things aren’t so terrible…. right? Then, what if you reflect back and see nothing? We are the ones who look forward, eager for anything better than this fake existence we survive amongst. There was a time when I would gaze to the future and see nothing but black. Imagining myself at 20, 25, 30 and seeing absolute darkness. I’m glad those days are behind me, but in much the same way I’m as lost as ever.
The things that assist me now are the same that lended a hand as a kid. I close my eyes and fantasise the opposite. I manipulate my reality and pretend I have those things that bring real happiness. That people are different, that friends are genuinely friends, that He thinks of me with regret, that every person in the street I pass is a loving and dear person that if I fell, they would catch.
As Gandhi once said; ‘Be the change you wish to see in the world”.
I say; “Plug me in and let’s play pretend!”