You know, my Dad and I talk a lot about 'being the centre of your own universe.'
The funny thing is, even though I understood that concept well, and even though I had applied it in the past, I was, last summer going through a phase where I wasn't the centre of my own universe. I felt like everything that was happening to me was almost like fate--I could only react. Every action I took was not a step in the right direction, it was just a step, after another step, ad infinitum, until Father Time pulled me off stage for one too many bad jokes.
What I have come to realize, as a weird kind of revelation that dawned on me, is that most of what I do is not some sort of fateful production. Yes, sometimes life feels that way because little choices we could never have imagined being important often have fateful (and sometimes regretably horrifying) consequences attached to them. There is no such thing as a little choice in life.
However, the beauty of being the Centre of Your Own Universe is that time is not the centre. Other people are not the centre. The actions that you participate in are the centre. And the more actions you create in the world, good or bad, the more you are keeping yourself at the centre.
I don't know what the future holds, but I can definitely control what I do in the present day, every day, and sometimes the only thing I need to do is detach from other people's expectations, and stop making my self-image be about what other people think. My self-image is my self-image. I deserve to give it some credit because no one is as good at hating yourself and your decisions more than you.
After all, you're the one that has to live with them.
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