Choose Your Own Adventure

I’ve always thought of life as a sort of “choose your own adventure” book. Remember those? Fate would bring you into a situation and you got to pick. You never knew for sure where any choice would lead you, but when you chose a path, you were on it, and that let fate carry you on the next choice.

I feel like this is the way life works. Fate leads you to people, to opportunities, to places and then we choose; we create our destiny after fate has done some work. We pick. We always get to pick.

Things don’t just happen. People make choices every day that dictate the way things are and the way things change. It's a choice.

Choose your own adventure. Choose who comes with you and where you go next. You may not be able to see all the way to the end, but life is a series of small choices; little everyday decisions that leads you into a life you made. Each choice is a part of who you become. You can learn from them, stress over them, try to ignore them, but one way or another, a decision will be made.

The scary part about this theory is that our lives aren’t safely bound between the two covers of a book. And if we choose a path of destruction, we can’t just start the game over again on page one. The decisions we make have real implications. The other characters in our lives aren’t bound to a certain fate as we pass them by, flipping pages to the next scene. The characters in our lives are supremely real and writing their own book alongside us. Inception indeed. The trouble is, our choices, their choices; our stories are all intertwined. Our choices can change someone else’s book. You can choose a direction for your life and have a potential ending with a potential someone a million pages away. And therein, lies fate.

Fate brings your characters in. Fate sets you up with a perfect alley-oop pass to fall in love, to find a job, a calling, a home. The trick to getting anything out of fate’s masterful work, is timing the jump.

If you aren’t ready, you won’t see it, you won’t go for it. You will make another choice and go another way. You may not even notice a choice or chance was there in the first place. The question is, will fate bring it back around when you are ready, when you have gotten to a point within yourself that you know it's time?

The point here is love.

If fate sets you up with the shot…. Take it. It’s a path you may never get again, but it was brought to you for a reason. I say take it, but I must say that with a wary heart… your choice in love, as much as your character counterpart’s, will drastically change your stories. If you’re lucky, they will become one. But if one person chooses another path, the counterpart’s story doesn’t go on unaffected. Their story is altered by a choice they already made, to take that chance and put their heart on the line. They already chose to love…

So be mindful if you are the one who gets to write the final sentence in a chapter of question marks. You are as much a part of their story whether you break their heart or keep it safe in your arms forever. Your actions matter. Your words matter. Your choices matter.

Choose your own adventure, but don’t be afraid to bring along a partner who can make your world better. If you only get one chance for happiness, could you live with yourself if you don’t take it?

There is no promise of forever…. But there’s no forever without an attempt. You don’t have to know exactly what it means or what is going to happen next. You just have to choose which path you want to take. Do you want to give love a chance, or don’t you?

Take my hand and jump.

“Don’t be scared, it’s only love that we’re falling in.”