I’ve noticed people are either of the mindset that life happens to them or they happen to life. I used to believe life happened to me. It’s why I spent so many years not doing what I wanted.
During my formative years it felt as though life happened to
me. My father died when I was 14. My mother was unable to cope and become
emotionally neglectful and sometimes physically absent. It felt as though I had
no control over my life. To further ingrain this belief, my mother didn’t allow
me to be a part of the decision making process at all.
For years, if I didn’t like a situation, I just thought
that’s the way it is. If I didn’t like a job, I would hope and wish things
would change. Personal agency, what was that?
But at some point it dawned on me. I could do something. I
think the first real inkling came from early childhood memories and how I used
to fight for what I wanted. It wasn’t easy, and I developed some unhealthy ways
of achieving my goals. But I started to realize victimhood was a choice.
There was another moment when it really hit home. My almost
step sister-in-law met someone and was asking everyone if she should move with
him across the country. She got all kinds of advice. When she asked me, I
simply asked her what she wanted. The look on her face was priceless. She
hugged me, said thank you and then moved 3000 miles away.
That question came out of my own awakening. And I would move
a great distance a few years later based on what I wanted. I finally began to
wake up, but it would be years before I began to truly embody that I could
happen to life.
This year brought another awakening. It isn’t that I happen
to life exactly. It’s that I direct my attention to what I want and let life
unfold before me. Life happens and we align with it. But this is still dawning
within. I still have yet to embody this greater understanding.
What I do know is that we have to turn away from the idea
that life happens to us and step into our sovereignty before we can begin to
realize the power of surrender.
May we all enter life from a place of empowerment and know
we happen to life.
