Lemons

“Don’t do what you want. Do what you don’t want. Do what you’re trained not to want. Do the things that scare you the most.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

When I was a child everyone kept asking me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wish they had told me instead, that life does not work that way.

Today I dreamt I was constantly running from one train station to another to get the train. When I finally figured out where it was going to be, I had to go find my luggage, which I found even though it was a tedious process. I reached the train signalling the conductor to wait just a second and he nodded in return. I walked beside it to find a good compartment, but the train left with me still standing on the platform.

This is how life is. This is how you should explain it to a child. It does not matter what plans you have; you will never get around to execute them. You can try whatever you want but life will decide which direction to take, when and where the train will come for you. You can call it destiny, you can call it god, karma or whatever but it does not change the facts: the amount of people living on the planet and the possible outcomes of every situation are infinite and the probability you can predict the chain of events which will be summed up as your life, is practically non-existent.

“The world ain’t straight. You grow up thinking things are a certain way. You think there are rules. You think there’s a way that things have to be. You try to live straight. But the world doesn’t care about your rules, or what you believe. The world ain’t straight, Vivian. Never will be. Our rules, they don’t mean a thing. The world just happens to you sometimes, is what I think. And people just gotta keep moving through it, best they can.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, City of Girls

I used to read a lot as a child, but it is just now that I realized I did not get the real meaning of the word fate when I read all the stories. Take Odysseus for example: the whole story is not about him or what happened to him but about the fact that he was trying really hard to get what he wanted, which messed up even more what he finally got; the will of the gods. He should have just sat back in his ship and enjoyed the ride. Would he have reached his destination that way? Probably. Would that destination have been the one he wanted aka home? Probably not, but it would have been the right one and more important he would have enjoyed the ride.

If you are at home right now, agonizing about the fact that life is giving you lemons, that you’re going to loose your job or your career will suffer or whatever, I’ll say to you: You don’t know that. Just do what you enjoy doing and things will fall into place. I know it is not an easy task, and you’ll need a lot more patience that you think you will but if it helps go watch “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency” and you’ll get the drill. Also, time will pass faster.