A thought on failure.

One of the questions I always used to find myself asking was "What is my purpose here?" I used to have this plan for my life: where I wanted to be, how my family would turn out, what job I was going to have, even what kind of home I wanted. But I never could get all the pieces to fit together just right. If it wasn't one thing, it was something else. I went from always knowing success to all of a sudden knowing failure, defeat. No matter what I did, something would happen to dash my ambition. Failure. Its an interesting word. Its so negative, so final. I used to say that I'd never fail at anything I really wanted. I've learned that that's not true. In life, we will experience failure. We will be defeated. We will fall, sometimes through no fault of our own. That's just the way life works. But the true test is this: Will we get back up? No failure no matter how devastating and overwhelming is complete if we refuse to give up. I don't know if our destiny or fate is predetermined or not, I don't believe it is, but regardless, we must always retain hope that things will turn out however they are supposed to be. This has been such a hard lesson for me, but I think that perhaps I've finally come to understand it. Keep your hopes alive. Keep dreaming. Keep fighting!

A thought on choices.

Each and every choice we will make in this life comes with consequences, both good and bad, intended and unintended.  These consequences become our experience. When we make a choice, it becomes part of our history, of who we are. We become the sum total of our experiences. The key though, is to not let our past define us but rather to teach us how to become our better and best selves. Take each problem, each controversy, each argument, each dilemma, each trial, each puzzle, and each choice and learn from it. Put in your best effort, stand for what you believe in, and always try and do what’s right. Then move on and let go. Plain and simple.   

Unanswered prayers

The topic of unanswered prayers has been on my mind as of late. Its funny, I used to hope and pray, beg, plead, and negotiate for a particular outcome in matters that have arisen in my life. I used to believe that somehow, someway, if those outcomes could come to fruition, then my life would magically become happy, and that I would be fulfilled and satisfied. Well, as you can imagine, a lot of those prayers went unanswered, or so I believed. It now seems to me that had those prayers been answered in the way I'd wanted them to, I'd be a lot less happy than I am now. So, in a way, if happiness was what my prayers were truly about, then it seems as if they were indeed answered. Its a strange feeling to know that you were wrong about your own personal feelings and desires, but nonetheless, its one that I seem to be growing happily accustomed to. I guess these experiences are to become a testament to me of Divine wisdom.

"Be still and know that I am God." Psalm 46:10