Turn your life around. It is in your hands, no one else’s.
The chill of winter is past. The winds now blow leaves and memories across the warm days…
February is when I see old red leaves, bare trees, new fresh green ones all at the same time. The entire cycle of life, at a glance.
What if I remove the dead leaves, prune and water the tree, add in some fertilizers…
Can I speed up the process of new life? Will new leaves grow faster?
Do my actions make a difference here, however minute?
Is it my free will, adding on to fate, or rather, modifying fate ever so slightly?
Is it possible for millions of such actions to add up, and shift fate, by perhaps a centimeter?
Isn’t even a centimeter of shift a huge achievement?
I don’t know.
What I do know is this:
Fate or life drops a mess on you sometimes. Or turns your entire life into a mess. By this I mean all of those events and circumstances that are really out of your control.
Like when the signal turns red a second before you could have shot past. Not when you fly into a rage, say and do things that hurt others, and claim you weren’t responsible for your actions.
So, when events force you into a particular situation, how you react and respond is definitely in your hands.
Look at my story:
My son was diagnosed with Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, a.k.a. autism, when he was 4 years old. He was outwardly a bright, sweet neurotypical child, extremely communicative, very expressive… in short, everyone’s favourite toddler and kid.
One fine day, literally, he began peeing all over the house and giggling. He was completely toilet trained by then, mind you… He wasn’t ill, no one at home was ill, there was no change in his environment whatsoever, no recent vaccinations/medical treatments… It was literally out of the blue, on a hot, blue, summer’s day.
We still didn’t pay particular mind to it… but that was the beginning of the downward slide.
And eventually, he was diagnosed.
And eventually, he became non-verbal.
And many more such reversals.
What could I have done?
Well, I did do all of this:
Unfair!!!
Why me!!!
O my God, o my God, o my God. What am I going to do. What is my SON going to do.
Everyone else is happy! Why not me!
How come my kid got singled out for this!
And so on and on and on…
It is never-ending, you know. The screaming, the crying, the depression… and remember, all of this has to be done in secret. No way in hell or earth do I want my son witnessing any of this.
So how did I snap out of it? For snap out of it I did.
Very simple.
My little fellow was sliding downhill, faster and faster. Was I going to rave and cry and let him slide? Or was I going to do my damnedest to slow down that slide, and then perhaps stop it, and someday, hopefully, reverse it?
Obviously, my damnedest.
Make no mistake, I still cry. I still feel like screaming and running away on many days.
But I won’t. I never will.
Because, my dear reader, some things are still in my hands, still under my control.
Take my son to therapy — my decision.
Give him access to new environments — my decision.
Do not pressurize him to conform — my decision.
Plan for his future — my decision.
Work to provide him financial stability — my decision.
I can most certainly act on all of these steps, and many more, while hoping for a miracle. The miracle is not in my control. Whether I will achieve my goals is not in my control.
What is in my control is to take every single action required to attain those goals, to the best of my ability.
And there you have it… this is free will.
(Perhaps there can be a weird argument that it is actually all fate, and I am still fooling myself into believing it is freewill…. Whatever. There lies the road to refusing to shoulder responsibility.)
I refuse to sit around, waiting for things to happen.
How about you?
My story may be a little dramatic. But you too may have had a million instances where you wanted to scream out, it’s not fair!
Dear reader, would you instead
take stock,
see what steps you can take, from that point,
act to the best of your ability, and
not bother about the results en route?
It makes you feel strong, vital, and thumb your nose at fate: throw whatever you want at me, but you cannot stop me!
