Can we shape our destiny?

I am thinking about the pathways that we are told are right or wrong. The ways in which deviation from those cause obstacles or if coping negatively through the ones we are “suppposed” to choose are that good for us anyway.

I am reading a book right now called Honey Girl: A Novel by Morgan Rogers who is also a queer black woman based out of Maryland. The story is a lesbian romance about a biracial woman who is rigid, and studious just getting her PhD in astronomy who randomly ( and intoxicatingly) gets married to another woman while celebrating in Las Vegas. This woman who followed all of the rules, pushed further than most, but after so much work she could not get a job in her field. She moves across the country to live with her new wife, and tries to fall in love. ( something that is completely out of character for her).

It is on my mind that the things that we most desperately want are actually the things that we self sabatage, or that life pulls us further away from. Maybe what we want is really what we are not supposed to have.

When I think about shaping my own destiny I imagine myself in the joyous positions of a great living with a great lover, or I’m surrounded by a group of laughing friends, or I am feeling connected with my sports buddies after a fulfilling day at my job in full-time research. Our heads are full of our own idealized scenarios sometimes we are even in denial of reality. Are we having a mental health problem? Maybe. But, maybe we are channeling the life that we had in a past life. Maybe those are the things that we are supposed to be aligned with in another realm, as our souls continue.

When we strain the wishes of our angels and guides we start to learn these “soul lessons”. These intangible bodily spiritual lessons that can leave us speechless. When my breath gets “ taken away”, and my words cease to exist because of how stunning the lesson is.

I am wondering if these soul lessons are indirectly leading us to the deeper things that we never thought we needed. Sometimes we want to think that we have all of the answers because they give us some sort of relief. Why do we keep putting ourselves into situations that are ultimately going to destroy our hearts for the slim chance of a desire becoming actualized? Sometimes I wonder if it is really our desire, the things like love, money, or success. Something greater eating at us, wants us to keep striving despite the most difficult of circumstances, like isolation, years of self hate, or so many personal losses.

When I lost my grandpa in 2019, I never thought I could feel such disorientation. He was an amazing man born to a big family, who was once picking cotton on a farm in segregated North Carolina. He was a handy man, loved nature ( even let the locus cover him while he worked in the backyard), he was a landscaper, and could build anything with just wood, and his tools. He was super traditional, but also not because of how soft spoken, and sweet in his heart he was. He took my sister and I to look at cotton on his truck in North Carolina. He talked about how his hands would bleed, and get pricked when they picked it. Those days never escaped him, and I remember him probably having something like PTSD. I knew it was coming but I was still foggy, and still till this day unable to cry. The sadness is lodged away, tucked away somewhere in my heart. This may be what drives me now, because I can’t bring him back maybe I can shape myself into something that protects someone else’s grandparents, or maybe I will save myself if God allows me to see those ages.

If I could create my own life, how would this be different from the life I am leading now? My struggles would be more normalized, cared for, and there would be truly no hierarchy of oppression. It is the people that want to act like we are crabs in a barrel that hold our own free lives back. If only we could sit more in the spaces where we “don’t belong”. If only we could really tell each other what we think and be met with true compassion instead of leaving if something hurts or brings things up that we are not ready to deal with.

Maybe if we just keep asking questions to ourselves, or being deviant just in small increments, we could discover that we do not have to chase what others have. What makes sense, might be a load of crap in the next few decades. What we think about ourselves as we transform may shift in ways that we never thought possible. With the revolutions, the physical battles, spiritual, emotional, and personal, these things may actually turn out to create something breathtakingly beautiful.

So, if you take away anything from this, I hope that you think about more possibilities beyond what you perceive are certain for your life. Act on the things that you can control, and have faith for those that seem impossible, but important to you. Acting may be doing something that actually scares you. You may think I could never do that ( within reason). Try it out, but if it does not work the first time, try something new while being heart smart. This world has work to do, but maybe your job is to make the world work for yourself.

No matter what you are a radical work of art. You are welcome. You aren’t running this race alone. Life will make you into something that is incredible and important because you are needed… this year, next year and beyond.