Contemplating the strange dance between choice, destiny, and the paths we walk.
I once heard someone on the interwebs say “there’s always a way, and I will find it.” I loved that instantly. Because we often desire certain outcomes but feel there’s just no way to get there. Our ego further reinforces that – it wants to keep us anchored in the familiar, because it’s “safe.”
This week, someone I know said “I don’t want to step over, I want to step up” and I loved that instantly, too. Stepping over is maintaining status quo. Maybe the details look a little different, but ultimately it’s the same old same old. Same choices = same results, typically.
Stepping up requires effort and, often, courage. There’s risk involved, like missing the step and falling back down. Or tripping over your own feet and falling on your face. But it also has potential for fabulous, positive change in your life.
There is no reward without risk.
I Don’t Want To Step Over, I Want To Step Up.
That comment keeps running through my mind, which has long struggled with questions about predetermination and free will. Is stepping either way free will or predetermination?
- God created me, has designed all of my days before I even existed, knows every minute detail about me, and every decision I make is what was already predetermined.
- I have free will to choose what I do. God knows what I will choose and what I won’t. Has infinite plans already designed depending on the choices I make.
- Choices spawn paths. You choose A and the natural consequences, good or bad, follow accordingly. Choose B and different consequences unfold.
- Can it be a bit of all of the above? Do I only have free will within the predetermined outline of my life? So, no matter what I choose, I still end up in the same places?
My experience has shown me that changing how I think can change the outcomes when familiar situations come up again. So if a situation returns and I choose a different response or plan of action, is that free will, or was it predetermined to happen that way?
How This World Seems To Work.
I have decided that ultimately, no one knows what’s going on here. We are all just winging it every day. Some wing it with no thought or reflection on the potential consequences. Others carefully contemplate and choose a response after weighing those potential consequences.
But even after careful consideration, there is still an element of the unknown. We may think we understand how the outcome will unfold, but until we are actually in the unfolding itself, it remains uncertain.
Many people react to unexpected situations out of deep wounding. Someone does or says something that hits an unhealed part of us, and we react instead of pausing to reflect and responding with calmness and clarity.
No shade — it’s just how things work.
When we know better, we can choose to do better.
Meanwhile, billions of people choose to do things every day, and those things set other things into motion, and somehow it all works together.
The Nature Of Opposites.
Of course, someone might ask: what about the tragedies that occur every day? How can those things possibly be… good?
Let’s step away from good and bad for a moment. Let’s examine how this world works…there is light, there is dark. There is day and night. Hot and cold, joy and sadness…the list of duality examples is infinite. For every one thing there is an opposite thing.
So if there are good things – love and beauty and peace and joy – there will be the opposite. That is just how this life was designed. Humans put a descriptor on those experiences, such as good or bad. And we go to great lengths to avoid anything deemed bad.
As much as I do not actually enjoy unpleasant experiences, spending your life only in “good” is somewhat unbalanced. The unpleasant things are an inherent part of our existence. And there is something to learn in them.
I believe we must experience some of that end of the spectrum now and then in order to fully, and deeply, appreciate the pleasant side of it.
And that means that sometimes when we step up, we encounter something unknown that might easily be described as bad. Later, farther up the staircase, we can look back and see how that “bad” experience was necessary to keep moving upward instead of simply stepping over.
Life is utterly fascinating and intriguing, and I am waxing gratefully contemplative today.
先生、ありがとう
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