“How much of life are you actually choosing? “

It’s incredible that our lives are full of scenarios we cannot fully predict.

Random moments, illnesses, dangers, small to large things collide with how we navigate ourselves through what we call reality, through life.

And yet the very nature of uncertainty has given us the cognitive and physiological tools to come to terms with our reality and take another step, hopefully.

Finding again a piece of synchronicity in our decisions.

We are compelled and propelled to adjust. In fact, our adjusting and adapting is partly what carries us through the day, across life’s changing temperature.

Feelings, thoughts and waves of impulses.

That real connection.

We are singular and complex. A skin holding a whole holographic system. And unseen, through DNA, there are things we are imprinting on top of, carrying forward, or eventually severing the imprint from in certain areas.

We are naturally performing, often unconsciously.

And somewhere in all of this, we are seeking awareness of the self through different time frames of knowingness.

I am aware of my own complexity, and also my misunderstanding, truly, of the world around me. And that plays an important part in the conscious and unconscious decisions I am making every second, every moment.

So how much of life are we actually choosing?

How much of what we call choice has already been shaped by what came before?

The people around us. What we have learned. What we have adapted to. What we think keeps us connected. What we believe the world requires us to be.

In the stillness of ourselves, we may find the space to hear our own heartbeat and know:

That is me.

In the ebb and flow of life, to love and be loved without confusion.

Perhaps that stillness gives us a moment to hear what is actually ours before we adjust again.

It’s a big part of what it means to surrender to the world around you. To go with the flow. To lean into new beginnings. To follow the excitement. To not fear, but to use fear as a catalyst for understanding, power and autonomy.

But we are foolish to believe that nothing is sacrificed in the world of connectivity.

We adjust to one another.

We absorb.

We grow and develop.

We expand.

And sometimes, without knowing it, we perform.

There is an ever-changing identity within all of this, with the opportunity to penetrate the veil that sometimes continues to suppress the voice being heard in the world even if it is only for our own ears.

At first, if we identify with the world, our idea of who we are is built partly on who we think we are within that world.

The script, or version of ourselves, runs coherently with each step until it no longer serves the purpose.

And maybe that is when we notice it.

The writing has already begun in ourselves.

We are so predetermined or at least so it seems that sometimes it can feel as though we are merely making choices we were destined to make.

And yet here I am, with a pen in my hand, writing this.

A flow of organic tissue fired up inside my own brain, making decisions and choices that I want to believe are genuinely my own.

Maybe this is where choice begins.

Not in believing that we are untouched by the world around us.

We are touched by everything.

People. Experience. Family. Culture. Fear. Love. Our bodies. Our histories. The things we can explain and the things we cannot.

But perhaps awareness gives us an opportunity to notice what has been choosing for us.

To notice the script.

To notice the performance.

To notice the adjustment.

And then, even for a moment, to ask:

Is this actually my choice?