A couple of weeks ago, I found myself listening to a talk by a woman called Amy Purdy. Amy, a world champion adaptive snowboarder (meaning she suffers from a disability) opened her talk with the following words:
“If your life were a book, and you were the author how would you want your story to go?”
Imagine if we had that kind of control over our lives; a blank storyboard in place for us to plan and live out our wildest dreams. Those exciting adventures that we daydream about would no longer be mere fantasies of the mind, but rather realities that truly existed. What many of us fail to realise however, is that we DO already possess that much control over our lives. The fact that we have choices over practically everything to do with our lives is the best evidence for this. You choose what to wear each day; you choose the friends and people that you associate yourself with; and although you do not choose what other people say or do to you, you can certainly choose how you react to them or their actions. It is so easy for an unemployed man to wake up in the morning, and decide the effort required for job hunting is too much, that time would be better spent sitting at home all day and collecting benefits. Yet it is just as easy for the same man to arise with vigour and purpose, and decide that he will apply maximum effort into finding a job until he is employed.
These choices we make on a daily basis are what shape and mould us as people, they enable us to define ourselves. In making these decisions, we are able to dictate the meaning that our lives have. Not so long ago, when discussing this idea with a family member, I was asked what I thought the meaning of life was, and here was my take:
We all have our own individual purposes. What one person will do another will not, and vice versa. There is no general purpose; we weren’t designed for one specific thing, but rather we were equipped with the skills and talents which means that we are able to do a multitude of things. At the same time, we were also given free will. Therefore we have the choice to do as we please. And in that way we are able to forge our own purpose. We essentially are given the pen. And we must write our own stories. Its important that we are able to be influenced by others ‘stories’ but we must try to make sure our own is original in some way.
You see to me, life is like writing in pen-you can’t rub it out. Sure, you could write in pencil, but that’s never as bold as writing in pen. You can live your life cautiously and guardedly, but that’s never the same as just letting yourself live, nor is it as enjoyable. We write in pen because it means that we can look back on what we’ve done and either enjoy the good times, or learn from the bad times. In life, rarely do things come easily, just as when writing, rarely do we get things right with the first draft. Yet we must continue to write, to tinker and shuffle, and learn from where we go wrong, because this is how we grow and develop as people. We must never regret anything because at one time, it was exactly what we wanted. At somepoint, and more often than not we shall encounter setbacks. It doesn’t mean we have to put the pen down-far from it, we must keep writing, because we write our own futures.
Use a pen, not a pencil. Be bold.