The fates that challenge us?
Change is the only constant, change can be good, though in time we all face a change for the worst that will challenges us to rise above what we currently think we are able to do and endure. The gods of fates are a prickly bunch, they lay traps for the weak, corrupt and naive, and they are angered by being deceived and cheated, they are ironically vindictive and play the long game when it comes to revenge. They can be our foes, though if you put on a good show they will reward you, show your intelligence and they be impressed and delight, they are as changeable as an autumn day in England, and to their favourites they will impart their gifts, they will give you part of their magic so that you can elevate yourself to a higher level, a better version and even to the stuff of legend.
However we never know when they are going to visit, so prepare for them in the good times, the Fates can strike with unimaginable speed, a second, a moment and a conversation can turn over the board of the game of life that you thought you were playing. They make you look around your life and question everything, down to the base line of reality, it can crush or liberate you, those are the crooked dice we are using, and every time you are forced to roll, you are all in and betting your life, status, reputation, everything you think is precious, every relationship is always at risk, any thing that you value can be lost or gain. That is the upside, when dreams come true, ambition are realised in unexpected way, new adventures open up and grip you, give you the purpose and meaning that you have always wanted and felt lost without.
As you are playing the game anyway, why not play with everything you have got, play as the best plausible version of yourself, bring out the swagger, expand into the full heroic stance that you are capable of at any moment, be the hero of your own story and play to win big. Imagine the best possible day that you could have everyday and pursue it with ruthlessness like you want it more than any other day that could be given you. The limitations of your current life situation are the architecture lines that bind your story to that moment, they are the tools that you have at hand to start your journey, where you go is entirely up to you, and how hard you are prepared to work towards a better one.
However Rome was not built in a day, the conscious thought that we want change is the beginning not the end of the process of altering your life to what you want it to be. Most of our lives are on the autopilot of habits, what we eat, do, say, think in a day is mostly likely to be what it was yesterday or the week before, even the habit of who we are, we have a strong internal model of who we are and what we would do in any given situation, though even that is a habit. To change ourselves in the most powerful way we have to redesign our model of ourselves, and that is a slow process made one brick at a time.
Habits are easily formed if they have a powerful short term reward and difficult if they a long term reward, no matter how much more we desire the long term outcomes over those short term ones. A slice of chocolate cake is a perfect example of short term pleasure being opposed to our long term goals, though this is not a hate piece against cake, I love a piece of cake and life would be more mono-toned without it, but it is the dash of colour, the accent wall of a happy and healthy life rather than an everyday part of my life. It is ironic that short term pleasure is so often a poor choice for us, when it is what kept us alive for generations, though we can hijack that process once it is understood, by making the better long term choices by rewarding them with short term pleasure.
It is by making small nudges that we can turn the steamroller of our automatic habits to our advantage, by doing an audit of what we already do, what are the small actions that we do everyday. If you are taking the bus to work, could you walk there instead, if you are listening to music, how about a podcast on something you want to learn, if you are reading social media with your morning cup of coffee, why not read a book for ten minutes, small nudges that align with your purpose. Which can be a purpose with a small “p” it could the purpose for the next five years, months, day or even hours, asking why I am doing this gives you reason to contemplate and reflect on the value of what you are doing. It might not change what you are doing, but at least you will know why you are doing it, whether it is putting food on the table or giving you freedom in the long run, any reason can be noble if you know why, if you can give it meaning.
It is up to you to find the meaning of your actions, what the purpose is that you are pursuing and whether you are building a life that is a worth-wile story for you to live, it is the challenges that we face whether we win or lose that define our lives that gives us those opportunities to become the heroes of our own lives. We are the ones who have to decide what kind of person we want to be, and that is only known by the actions that we choose to take and those that we do not. We are creatures of cause and effect, we live in time, and time only matter in the manner that it changes the world, so be the cause of good effects and hope that it matters to you, because if it does not, it will not matter to anyone else, we have to save ourselves because ultimately that is who we are responsible for, and only by saving ourselves can we help to save others.
Though often it is other people who can challenge us the most, or in the case of lock down, a lack of people is an unequal or even worse problem, especially when that isolation is not chosen. That is the fates for you, when you dream of solitude it gives you people and when you want to expand your social bubble it gives you your own company, the trick of life is to enjoy whatever life gives you with gratitude, so if you have ever thought about going on a silent retreat, writing a book or finishing one, develop a skill or craft, exercise, learn to cook or want to deepen your relationship with the single person you live with, this would be the time. Use your imagination and you will find something that is meaningful for you, then at least you might have a story of lock down that you are happy to tell.
You have a chance to build yourself a perfect lock down day, all those things that you thought might be nice to try, even something as basic as playing a board game with your children, you have a displacement of time that will be filled. Nature hates a vacuum, it requires you to fill it or it will do it for you, the same is true of any habit, if you get rid of a bad habit, you need to replace those action with something better a higher quality action if you can. That is why we turn to our mental list of things that we would like to do, to inspire us to better actions and it is up to us to actually start doing them. The fates have given us an opportunity that we can chose to take if we want, that is the challenge to turn the bad times to our advantage, to be worthy of what the fates gives us and be the best version of ourselves.
