Create Your Destiny
Navigating a Course for Dream Fulfillment
BY: T. Franklin Murphy | October 2018 (edited January 21, 2021)
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We are not hapless victims of fate. With clear vision, we can choose a path that creates a flourishing destiny.
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We have lovely dreams. Hopes for a better future. We explore options, move towards our goals and then life rudely interrupts, halting progress and depressing our souls. Discouraged we throw up our hands, suppress our dreams and return to our ordinary lives. While we can't force life to bow to our demands, freely give us what we desire, we can navigate around the unplanned obstacles, and create our destiny.
Life is dynamic—it flows. When we stop forward movement, we lose some of the richness. Psychologist and philosophers offer many valuable tools for deeper understanding but each of theory is only a snapshot—incomplete. They never embody our full experience. When science completely disassembles behavior, freedom to choose disappears. This is a shame. I don't argue that a homunculus caricature lives in our head, pulling strings and making decisions. Yet in the gracious beauty of living, the combination of biological and cultural forces, emerges into consciousness. Somewhere in the realm of unconscious impulses and conscious processing choices are made. We make mistakes, we reevaluate and improve. "Yet in the gracious beauty of living, the combination of biological and cultural forces, emerges into consciousness."
Life flows. It gives, and it takes. There is no precise pattern conventional wisdom can offer to guarantee happiness, success, or health. We learn from the many snapshots but must integrate theory into a course that navigates the fast-moving waters of reality. It is on the waters of life, not in university laboratories, that our destinies are discovered.
As we engage in living, with all its richness, we have opportunities to expand. Some opportunities arise from wise choice, other opportunities appear random. We envision the self-made person as a hard-earned reward. Sometimes, yes. But many of success stories, have many unseen components—opportunistic timing or large inheritances. Our stories are not completely self-written. We are, however, not powerless. Ultimately, we take the life that is given and mold it; we are the captains of our ships, and the sculptors creating our destiny. We do not choose the stone to sculpt but we swing of the mallet and the position the chisel. “It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll; I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.” ~ William Ernest Henley
As we balance fate of circumstance with empowerment of choice, we widen our vision, seeing beyond the theories. The intertwining experiences and the liveliness of reality, can be directed. We choose amidst the whirlwinds of activity. We can be mad and examine the the emotion for appropriateness. We examine the behaviors of others against a wider backdrop. Learn wisdom, be empowered! Start creating the destiny you desire—today. Change occurs one small choice at a time as we consistently integrate knowledge into the dynamics of living. Please support FLS with a share:
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