The Master Of Your Destiny

“Understand that the right to choose your

own path is a sacred privilege.

Use it.

Dwell in possibility.”

–Oprah Winfrey

Freedom is a blessed gift.  Something that has provoked wars, battles and risky endeavors too many to count, but as you look around, how appreciative of this gift are you truly being?  Being one, some people two and even three generations removed from the end of World War II, has unfortunately brought with it some apathy as this freedom spoken about above is blindly taken for granted.

To be free to choose how you want to live your life is something centuries ago, the majority of the population on Earth couldn’t truly fathom, yet children and sadly, adults, today go about their daily lives as though someone else is pulling the strings, as though they really must follow someone else’s rules, whether it be their family’s, their society’s, their friends, etc.

In other words, in no other time in history have the opportunities been so plentiful, and yet the number of participants been so few. How many times have you heard the phrase I can’t? How many times have you been the one uttering these two words?  What is really being said when someone speaks such words is that they can’t, or won’t, put forth the strength to pursue what they so desperately want to achieve, to become or to accomplish. That is the simple beauty of freedom. The only person left to truly stop you is yourself.

Now, some of you may immediately refute this saying, but my boss, my parents – the list could go on, but the fact I’m getting at is that no one can truly hold you back unless you let them. In this modern day and age in the majority of industrialized nations, you have the right speak up, to go forward and live the life that sits comfortably with your gut.

For example, at the young age of a high school graduate, your peers may have been pressuring you to stay close to home, but when you had time to think on your own without having to hear their voices, you knew you dared and desired to attend a college elsewhere for the sake of your education, not your social circle. The choice was yours to make. Upon finishing your undergraduate work, you were offered a job at a highly prestigious, yet low paying job that had the potential to land you a career of fulfillment, yet your parents wanted you to pursue a law degree to ensure you’d have a high paying career. Again, the choice was yours to make. And lastly, what about the chance to live as an expatriate in a country that at one point only seemed a dream? Some family and friends may think it absurd and ludicrous – Giving up a chance at receiving full pension, a mortgage that is almost paid off, have you gone mad? But what is life for if not to be lived? The choice is yours to make.

The most exquisite part about the reality you now live in is that you do have a choice. Keep in mind that with whatever choice you make, the responsibility to deal with whatever comes with it is yours as well, but think of it this way.  Wouldn’t you rather take responsibility for actively pursuing something you believed in with all of your heart, than having to deal with the ramifications or drawbacks of a decision that you passively agreed to?  Exercise your choice to make decisions now that will lead you to your cherished ideas, or if you’ve already taken so many of the necessary steps, only to be continually unsupported and wracked with doubt heaved onto you by others, have the courage to pursue what feels right for you in your heart. After all, I tend to agree with Mark Twain when he says, "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do."

Images: (1) Fashion Served (2) We Heart It (3) Rosso Ubari (4)Source