You Don't Choose a Life...You Live One

(This post is being continually edited while I think about this! :)

Ritual is important to my day. I really enjoy taking a moment to get my feet on the ground before I take off running. One of the rituals I have is savoring a morning coffee and some peace and quiet while I use facebook to take a quick glance at what's going on in lives of many of the people I interact with.

I do this for a few reasons. The first is because I feel like it's important to have a heads up regarding the mental/emotional state of other people before I accidentally say or do something insensitive. This is  my way of proactively ensuring my foot isn't repeatedly lodged in my mouth. Another reason is because it's the quickest way for me to gauge the emotional/stress levels on campus. Students are connected to facebook and feel comfortable sharing. It's a great way for me to get free information that helps me do my job better. The last reason is that occasionally someone will post an article, link, or quote that reminds me to keep my finger on the pulse of the society I live in and the issues (big and small) that people have on their minds.

I'm quite an introverted person (despite my very social living situation) and sometimes I need to do research about our human nature in order to stay in touch with what I think and how it compares to the thoughts of others.

Today a quote caught my attention. Here it is...

"You don't choose a life...You live one."

What powerful words. Even as I read them back to myself they hit me square in the gut. Something about them sounds right...like many other such definitive statements with authority and proclamation of truth ringing in the sentence structure...but something else feels wrong. Maybe not wrong exactly, more incomplete.

The older I get, the less satisfied I have become with definitive statements of truth like this one. I am no longer the sort of gal that can stick bumper sticker slogans like this about the nature of life on my vehicle...I'd put a, "Literacy is the way"...or something about being kind to others or working to save stray dogs or cats.. but I can't stick a quote to my car that is so black and white about the nature of life.

I did a little googling.

It sounds like the quote posted most likely belongs to a new movie I would really enjoy watching. It's called, "The Way" and sort of looks like a male version of "Eat, Pray, Love."

Here is some info and the trailer: "The Way"

So what's the issue? Boy...where to begin. It seems like there are a couple very basic views of life and our human experience that have the potential to color every experience we have. It's a fundamental bedrock that we choose (yes choose) to build the rest of our belief systems on.

I am well aware that many people are uncomfortable with the idea of a reality that includes the idea of some sort of pre determined path that a God apart from us has created without our conscious knowledge. There are those that emphatically declare that everything that happens to us is our choice and a result of our interactions with others. Even for people that believe in the idea of energetic consequence, there is this thought that what you put out is what you get back.

There are others that adhere to an equally powerful but contradictory view and back their view up with scripture like what follows below.

All are from the New International Version (NIV).

• “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jer 29:11

• “I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.” Isa 42:16

• For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Eph 2:9-11

Now, I think the above statements are really very comforting. It would seem like God is there to lead us in times of darkness. Some people however have taken these scriptures to mean that all control is removed from us. We are passive puppets of God. God makes the choices and everything, both the good and the bad are predetermined consequence of something outside us. If God is all powerful and all loving (Thinking about a Process Theology professor I had the honor to learn from here) how could anything happen in this world without God's desire to make it so?

...How in the world can we make the idea of a loving God that protects us and guides us coexist with a world that seems so full of sad things?

A friend of mine lost her mother when she was little. She remembers people trying to comfort her by saying, "God needed your mother in heaven." Boy... I bet that was rough for her! Imagine a little girl trying to digest the idea that the God that is supposed to love and care for her took away the person most dear in her life for his own selfish needs. (Yeah..I know that was a hard sentence to read right?...We tend to project on God a lot don't we?)

I really can't believe God would be involved in so many of the terrible things I see on the news, or the tragedies that befall people of all faith backgrounds from all walks of life.

Neither extreme seems very satisfactory to me.

I do believe the universe, or God has dealt us a hand of cards to play. At the same time..I could not and would not tell anyone that a God had decided to subject them to harm or pain.

When it comes to the life that we experience, I do think we are moved to action and are given little hints and nudges. I think we have choices about how we deal with what comes our way....Sometimes how we handle bad things does require some faith, grace, and divine assistance. Further, I believe that there probably is some sort of plan for us that we aren't completely aware of. When we fall too far away from our path we should be prepared to be hit over the head as many times as it takes for us to get it. There are lots of miserable people out there.

The issue of, "living vs choosing a life" is one of responsibility for me. I think God (or the universe) can not work with us if we are unwilling to follow, and following requires choices to be made. In that respect, it is the choices we make every day that keep us in sync with the universe or that close us off. When you think of it that way, life is something that we choose and something we live.

I came home and opened the conversation with my favorite sparring partner. I asked him what he thought. He said something interesting that I would not have considered.

"Sometimes the universe happens to us. Sometimes we happen to the universe."

He brought up the fact that we are now capable of destroying our world and there is nothing God or (insert whatever term you are comfortable with here) can do about it. If we chose to do that, it would change the entire universe (literally)...and what about Hitler, he said. Was that a person realizing his full potential or was that something that happened to the universe?

Sort of a drastic comparison I know...but I could see where he was coming from.

I see it with students..and I have experienced it myself. Sometimes plans that we try and force just aren't meant to work out...but...even a bad hand of poker can occasionally win the game (not my analogy here but I still thought it was great).

Sometimes bad things happen to good people...but sometimes it seems like the door that closes really does lead us somewhere new and exciting. Sometimes it is a path we never would have chosen or seen on our own...we just have to make a choice about how and when we are ready to walk it.

I never planned to be where I am today, but I know that my choice to act or not to act has built my experience. This is especially true when bad things happen isn't it? We choose how we react to any number of terrible things that we experience. Do we choose to live as victims of circumstance, or do we work to make meaning from what would seem to be an impossible situation?

I suppose I believe that I'm a partner to the universe. I understand to let go means choices must be made. Choices about how I will interpret things, how I will love people, how I will use my time are all important. I choose what I will invest in and what I worship. I choose to act on my intuition or not. I choose how I react to any given situation on any given day. I can't believe that this life is a passive existence...at the same time..I don't believe that we can "do anything we set our minds to" either. We have all been dealt a hand to be played.

How we play it however, I think that's up to us.