You Happen to Life or Life Happens to You

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.