Life Is Always In Motion Whether We Choose It or It Chooses Us
We’re empowered to choose what our lives look like.
It’s all too easy to feel despair.
Hell, lots of messages are being constantly screamed at us on TV, radio, social media, newspapers, and all other public fora intend to cause despair. Generally ludicrous, extreme, “or else” messages. Vote for that guy or else you will despair. Buy this product or else you will despair. Drive this car or else you will despair. Use this service or else you will despair.
Look familiar? This is part of the machine of our fear-based society. Coupled with all the distractions of our modern society, they’re intent on disempowering us.
How does that work? Rather than be mindful and thus consciously aware of life, we engage in the rote and routine of the subconscious. Distracted by the necessary and unnecessary of our culture and society, we are swayed to react to the despair being sold to us constantly.
I was not taught in any formal schooling I received how to be mindful of myself. Odds are, neither were you. Education has its place – but a great deal of it focuses on learning to be a cog in the machine of our society.
That’s not to say I didn’t have some incredible teachers during my school years that encouraged me to think above and beyond the lessons. I did. And because I loved school, and learning – I still choose to expand my knowledge. Keyword – choose.
So long as we live, life is always in motion. Every single day we choose to live it or let it live us.
But sometimes we don’t choose, too.
The three ways to exist
There are 3 ways to live this life. What’s more, all of us will vacillate between these three modes of existence.
Circumstances, happenstance, and the constant motion of life will push and pull us in different directions that shift us around these three ways to live life.
- Let life live you. Rote, routine, subconscious living. You just go with the flow and let the routines carry you. General existence. This is largely neutral.
- Curl up in a ball and await death. Despair, depression, half-conscious living. You tend to see all as dark and dismal and suffer. Expectation of death and despair, literally and metaphorically. This is largely negative.
- Take the wheel and drive life. Conscious awareness, mindful living. You make choices and decisions and direct your routines. Seek to work with potential and possibilities. This is largely positive.
The truth is that we will flip between these at different points in our lives. Certain circumstances call for just generally exiting and letting life live you. Some happenstances cause the despair of curling up in a ball and awaiting a “death” – metaphoric or otherwise. But you always can choose to take the wheel at any time and drive your life.
It’s utterly normal to go through all three forms of the 3 ways to exist. The easiest is to let life live you. It requires little to no thought, minimal action, and provides occasional glimpses of the realization of our potential and possibilities.
But it’s not chosen. It just is. Life is still in motion.
Why choose to take the wheel?
I’m going to put a few harsh realities out here.
In our current bodies, we have approximately 80 years to experience life. Some will get more time, some less. During those 8 decades or so, you have 29,220 days.
We can look at this in one of three ways. There are 29,000+ days to merely exist, 29,000+ days of misery and despair, or 29,000+ days of potential and possibilities.
I don’t know about you, but of these three choices, the third is by far the most attractive. If I can choose 29,000+ opportunities for potential and possibility, that’s exciting.
The point is that it is a choice. One that you get to make a minimum of 29,000 times. Choose from these options twice on any given day, and now you get 58,440 times to choose. Four times a day, it becomes 116,880 times to choose.
I know that some people find that overwhelming. That’s a lot of choices. But you also choose if you allow it to overwhelm you or excite you.
Life is always in motion. Always. Even when we sleep, we’re still moving through life. All these opportunities constantly pop up for us.
When we choose to take the wheel, we’re choosing to use our mindfulness to take control of our thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions. With that, we’re choosing to empower ourselves to find and/or create our lives how we desire them to be.
It often seems like there’s a catch to these choices. Yes, there is. But it’s not what you think it is.
The catch is a false narrative
At the start of this post, I got into the constant bombardment of messages of despair we all experience. An enormous part of our fear-based society is built on these messages.
By electing that asshole, buying the useless product, driving the overpriced car, and using the unnecessary service, we are led to believe we won’t despair. But then the asshole politician takes away your rights and doesn’t serve you in the least, the product you bought is just a distraction, the car constantly sucks your wallet dry, and the service serves only the person you bought it from.
Did the despair go away? Nope. It was worsened.
Empowerment and choosing to be consciously aware is going to pull you out of the cycle above. And that’s the price you will pay, that’s the catch to the choices you make.
Rather than join the masses and be a life lives you consumer, you’re doing the driving. And in so doing, you’re giving yourself permission to live life on your terms.
The catch is that when you choose this, some will call you selfish. People will think because you’re living more mindfully, you are being selfish, and not a productive part of society or doing what’s expected of you.
But this is a false narrative. Why? Because who but you is living in your body, your head, heart, and soul? Only you. And if you desire to control your life experience at all, the only thing you can control is how you choose to live in the motion of day-to-day life.
We experience all three ways to live life along the way
Even when you choose to take the wheel and drive, there will be days you let life live you. Similarly, there will be days when shit happens, and the pain of it causes you to desire to curl up in a ball and await death. But in the constant motion of life and the thousands upon thousands of choices you get to make – you get to choose what the majority looks like.
The empowerment that comes from conscious awareness and practicing mindfulness tends to face us towards the positive end of the flexible cylinder between the extremes. Life always being in motion, you always have a choice. Sure, sometimes it’s between bad and worse – but it’s still a choice. And so long as you draw breath and are alive, the motion of life will carry you – or you can take the wheel and drive it.
Conscious awareness is a product of the here and now. Take this moment to pause and reflect. What are you thinking? How and what are you feeling? What actions are you taking and what intent is behind them?
Knowledge of all the above gives us control over the one thing we can – our life experiences.
I know what I prefer to choose and how I desire to live my life the majority of the time. How about you?
To choose to take the wheel and drive the motion of your life isn’t hard
It’s all about working with mindfulness of thoughts, feelings, and intentions to direct actions.
When we use conscious awareness to be mindful here and now, we give ourselves the power to take the wheel and choose to live life on our terms, rather than be driven by life or live in despair. Knowing that we have a finite amount of time – but are constantly in motion – we can choose to take the wheel and experience the vast potential and possibilities life has to offer all of us at any time.
This empowers you – and in turn, your empowerment can empower others around you. That can expand to change the bigger picture matters, too.
Choosing for ourselves employs positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for our lives.
Taking an approach to positivity and negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts matters in a way to open more dialogue. In that form, we can explore and share where we are between the extremes and how that impacts us here and now.
Lastly, the better aware we are of ourselves in the now, the more we can do to choose and decide how our life experiences will be. When that empowers us, it can also open those around us to their own empowerment. And that is, to me, a worthwhile endeavor to explore and share.
Thank you for coming along on this ride with me.
This is the four hundred and fifty-sixth entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.
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