Everyone loves a good story.

Life, after all, is just a rarefied anthology of the tales we have told ourselves. It could be an objectively terrible morning but based on the prose and the manner with which we craft the details, reminiscing about that time might actually be a happy experience. Any old fool can make history, but very few have the power to decide on the narrative. Bottom line: when it comes to telling your story, don’t play the fool. Tell it your way.

The notion that we can regulate our experiences for the better is not just the allegory of an optimist. Humans have often been extraordinarily able to alter in their heads better fit their pre-existing worldview. Through guidance, severely traumatic and/or similarly life-altering events can almost be erased from memory – or at least transformed beyond all recognition. Everything you are surrounded by is a projection of reality insinuated by your sense of perception – a perception fills in the blanks and takes weight averages. 

We’re all stories, in the end. Just make it a good one, eh?

-Doctor Who

Altering the significance of an event that has already taken place is no mean feat. Going through the motions is not always smooth. often we’ll be on a road and realize that it’s the wrong one; It won’t take us where we need to go, or there may be a better route available. Sometimes we have to take that U-turn. Only where appropriate and safe to do so, but it must be done nonetheless. But don’t assume you have travelled far when going round in circles. Distance and displacement are often conflated terms. And since we must practice being mindful of our every day, the destination suddenly becomes much less important. We’re all getting there in the end. One way or another, time passes, entropy takes effect, disorder creeps in. The destination is the same. The displacement is the same for all of us. But the distance? Those highways, slip roads, and roundabouts to nowhere? Each path is unique to the individual. Our bodies give us context  – they are a means of having a world. Our world. Our journey – which can only be reviewed in retrospect. We all know where we have to go, but how to get there will always be a personal choice. We will carry on existing with beliefs and desires and hopes and dreams. We will smile, and we will hurt. We’ll know what it means to be loved and to be loathed. And someday we might come to a fork in the road – an existential dilemma. By resigning to that choice we are allowing it to define us. But by making it, we are one step closer in the right direction – simply because we have acted.

One may lose sight of the way ahead, but It’s never too late to realize that our life has gone down an undesirable route. Sometimes to get on the ideal road, we must turn around – retrace our tire tracks. People hate the idea of going backward, but that’s because they see it as a setback rather than an opportunity to try the important things again- not a ‘u-turn’ but a ‘you-turn’. It does not and will never matter where our final destination is. That’s an easy one for humans – we die. So it all comes down to the journey. 

“You are not in the universe; you are the universe, an intrinsic part of it.”

So take control. Find your road. Live your adventure- have the best one ever. And when the time comes to tell your story, you make that even better.