The Chapters of Life

Wake up, go to work, come home, work out, eat….

Wake up, go to work, come home...

2 holidays a year, regular socialising….

… kids, marry, a house, a car, watch others die ... then die yourself.

I have always felt that life had a distinct level of predictability. Even those go-getters, higher achievers, famous figures, even they had a solid path that was ultimately set out for them: Fate. Whatever way you wanted to look at it, life was nothing more than several peaks and troughs, highs and lows dominating its every facet.

Those stuck in the endless cycle of work, sleep, repeat had often spoken to me about there being more to life. That they were desperate for a change. They suggested to their wives: “Let's quit town and move to the country!" Others watched a self-love guide and then declared that they were taking up yoga for better mindfulness. Yet, these things still had an undeniable, enormous level of predictability; they were nothing more than a common statistic.

I sound negative, don’t I? Well, you would be a little negative too if you were dead like me! What I can tell you now, however, based on decades of reflection, is that there is indeed more to life.

What if you could control fate? Better yet, what if you could harness this control and discover an enriching way of getting the best out of life without really doing an awful lot?

I had strong ambitions: to make my mark on the world. I wanted to be remembered, to be successful, and to have a comfortable fortune. When I died, a charity foundation stood tall under my name. Wealth surrounded me. Friendships circled me. A brilliant family stood by my side until the very end.

I achieved what I wanted because this is possible for everyone. See, we start out with everything being possible. We only stop the things we want from happening because of the adjustments, detours and distractions we make along the way,

Let’s hold on to that thought for just a second.

Let me be clear, fate is not just about our desires or dreams. It is everything. It is our ambition, our goals, our happiness, our drive and our passion.

So, you might think, well, many in the world want to be a millionaire. Well, they all can! It is the little adjustments in their life that prevent them from achieving this.

Even if you have made an adjustment that prevents you from being a millionaire, you might still have that desire to be a millionaire. But if you keep adjusting, you will never ever become one, no matter how much you want to!

The same truth applies to those who possess an insane desire to fly. Somehow, a little unconscious adjustment will always inhibit their ability to grasp that opportunity. Trust me, it will. It is human nature. And they will keep making these adjustments so that they can never soar up across the sky, even if they never realise it themselves.

Let's look at it from another angle. Olympic swimmers desire to win as many gold medals as possible. They believe that that is their sole purpose. They will train as hard as possible, to win as many medals as they can, pushing themselves harder and harder each time. Except for that one year, where they never win gold because they made a single, fatal change to their routine. A raging party the night before the event, or a summer where they spent more time working on their relationship with their mother than focusing on their goal. Or they crudely dismissed the advice of their trainers and suffered the consequences.

Even those that do not desire wealth or fame, may fall under the curious nature of these adjustments. Poverty-stricken individuals would desire a life without poverty. Their fate may allow them to achieve it, but delicate adjustments would mean they too could struggle to climb the proverbial ladder. Such is the bleaker outlook on adjustments.

After all, every action has a consequence. Even breathing, pushing carbon dioxide into the air and the biosphere, or the extremity of murder; action breeds consequences.

Your whole life is a book, already composed from start to finish in carefully, constructed chapters. However, at points of choice in your life, when it's time to turn the page, the next chapter can go down different paths, each with a different outcome. And you must choose. Perhaps you can choose to stay or break up with your girlfriend. Perhaps one chapter alone will keep you on the road to your fate and the others maybe become minor changes to your life. Of course, you can read all the choices and choose the one that supports your fate line. You can proceed with neither penalty nor distraction.

But should you choose a chapter that detours away from your fate, your dreams, desires, and days come to halt, and wait until you play out every aspect of that chapter. Offering no advancement whatsoever, the chapter runs out until you return to your fate in the next. Sure, a detouring chapter oozes fun and excitement, but in the long run, you lose precious days of your life and put your fate in uncertain limbo.

Tough isn't it?

But where does your book of life come from?

Well, everyone has one, but not everyone can see theirs. It's a small, black notebook and no one ever receives it in the same manner. Strangely, it adopts many forms, often seeming irrelevant, thus resulting in several of us never knowing of its existence! Commonly, your book of life appears as the memoirs of another, scrawled raw and unprinted in the small, black notebook. A rough first edition or untidy notes of the memoirs of the life that we desire, the same way we desire an idol's or a famous figure's life.

And the chapters? Everyone interprets the text differently and indeed though the words may look the same, and though they may appear in the same black notebook, each person's book is unique to them and them alone. Perhaps it may not take the shape of an elaborate biography. Perhaps it could be an illustrated encyclopaedia with author annotations at the page ends. Perhaps it could even be a cookbook, though how the four different versions of a hotpot dish are going to be relevant to your life choices, is a mystery. Its diversity is just another one of the many reasons that people fail to know of their book's existence.

However, there are some who say that they live their life by a certain text, school of thought, or idea. These people have undoubtedly, found their notebook.

Questions must be sprinting through your mind at present. What about a terrible fate such as getting cancer? Surely you would do anything to get away from that? Well, yes, you could delay its arrival. If it is inevitable, however, it could circle back to you in the future or be part of every single distraction chapter.

It is true that you have the power to make your choices, sometimes at a cost, but more often than not, the inevitable aspects will always return. A distraction will lower your life day by day. You will get what you want, but you may spend less time basking in the glow of your accomplishments. Or you may take a distraction and never succeed in achieving what you want.

This is the way of life. Distractions hasten your period of prosperity's arrival, but cuts short its stay, when sticking to your fate may bring you boundless prosperity later in life. Think! That satisfaction when you finally paid off your mortgage or got an incredible job; it may have taken you years, but why? Were you following your fate line in your small, black notebook, or did you take the detours? True those detours may have given you the best vacation of your life or helped you meet the woman of your dreams, but they moved you farther away from the treasures you were destined to achieve.

Ah, but here lies the conundrum. Is it better to take the linear path and achieve everything and live to be 103? Or is it better to go with the flow, navigate those peaks and troughs, choose some of those distractions, or maybe never find your notebook and live to 80?

My notebook fell into my fingers when I was 25. I followed it to the letter for 7 years, received everything I had ever wanted, and soon, boredom set in. I began to choose the detours and distractions for the next 18 years. I shaved 17 years off my lifespan to take a second mortgage out on my home, to marry once again, and be gifted with two lovely children. I died surrounded by those who I love, leaving behind a legacy and all I had ever wanted by the age of 86.

Once again, life is not straightforward and simple. The most mind-numbingly boring days of my life were the 7 years where I followed my small black notebook. When I was 60, I stopped reading it altogether.

Fate could exist. It could not. Just because it’s written down doesn’t mean you have to do it. Take the distractions! Treat them as choices! But remember, once you have lived the chapter, you will never get it back.