What's meant to be

"will never pass you by"

We may try to run and hide, catch our breath and consider a different life but the experiences and interactions meant for us will never pass us by. I used to believe free will was our get out of jail free card. If I put up a wall, closed myself off from the rest of the world, life would pass me by. I’ve tried it enough times to let you know, it works for awhile, but no matter how many barriers you create or how hard you work to avoid bumping into other people, the dam always breaks and life finds a way to flow your way.

Free will is our gift to consider what it might feel like if we are in control, destiny is what holds all the cards. We will get where we are meant to be, we might just take the long way around and end up walking in some circles for a bit while we figure out growth and expansion is the name of the game. My middle child likes to say, “do the things that are hard.” I watch from afar as she takes on age old ideologies fearlessly with tenacity and audacity. My oldest likes to make his way through life under the radar with a wall formulated plan, he is the tortoise I am the hare. My youngest shows up and announces to the world that she has arrived and takes everything in for what it is not what she wants it to be. I’m learning something from each of them, as I continue to decide how to make this life of mine great in some way.

Things get stuck in my head. I carry them with me for years, even decades. Mr. Hood writing in my yearbook, “life’s not fair,” has lasted the longest and played out too many times to count. Just a couple of year’s ago Paul whispered, “it’s easy - live a great life; then write about it.”

There’s a whole lot of choices to make and somewhere in the business of making plans for the future they quietly slip by, one by one, while most of us don’t even know we are making them. These past few weeks have reconnected me to a lot of familiar faces and forgotten times in my past. It’s like I’ve been watching my life in review, friends from when my son was in elementary school, previous customers from both of my retail adventures as a shopkeeper, someone that even knew my dad, and those I met because of being involved in state government. It’s all adding up to I can run but I can’t hide forever. Hiding might sound like a curious word choice. I’m not in danger or worried that someone may harm me, it’s more of a case of having to get over the belief that I’m posing in my life as someone who might actually know what they are doing.

The truth is, I have no idea what I’m doing or what even comes next for me. I know what feels good, what is familiar, and all that comes easy to me. Is that living a great life? Is that life being fair, handing me opportunities that fit like a glove and asking me to grow roots and settle in? It kind of goes against what I have been taught. Life is struggle, it likes to beat you up, and then leave you out in the rain to dry. But what if life is fair in the way that it doesn’t give up on you? It keeps bringing around lessons you need to face so that you may learn and move beyond them. What if the struggle isn’t meant to harm but help us grow? What if we’ve been looking at life as a doomsday sentence when really it’s something we all couldn’t wait to jump in and see what we could see?

Life is great simply because it is a unique prospective of human consciousness. Free will gives us the awesome ability to stretch it like silly putty in any way that we may like to see how it may respond. Life isn’t fair, but it also isn’t unfair. We all have an innate ability to create the world we live in, some of us just didn’t get the memo. Others heard it loud and clear and took off for the races getting a head start. We become our thoughts and actions. What we think and feel determines how we live each day. Our days are strung together like sonnets and sing the tune we most desire to make. If only we aligned our thoughts with our desires. Imagine believing you are worthy and capable of doing and being your best version of self. Can you feel the shift? Your energy becoming ever so lighter and lifting you from a place of most likely never to sometime soon?

Think but a thought

Let it swirl and be made

For you are the ringmaster

and I am the same

Jennifer Ellen Parker - Think but a Thought!

George graciously ordered copies of my children’s books so I would be able to sell it at The Shops at Cape Neddick Maine. My eyes widened at his generosity. I smiled quietly as he said “I believe in you babe.”

Do what you’ve always wanted to do.

Say what’s on your mind.

Love like you’ll never get the opportunity again.