FATE

*(I've been going through old school papers today, I have them stored up from Junior High probably. I found something I wrote when I'm guessing I was around 14 or 15. I imagine the assignment was to analyze the poem, and maybe that's all I was doing, not actually expressing these words as my own beliefs -but I don't know. Although the 'self' that wrote that may have been naive in her bluntness and ability to 'say it like it is' or at least how she thought it was for the purpose of that assignment, it was also an interesting and somewhat sobering experience to read words I'd written what seems like so long ago and have them speak to me the way they did ...)


"It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
The captain of my soul."
W.E. Henley "Invictus"

It doesn't matter how easy your life seems to be or how hard. It may seem that you can never really "make" something of your life or that all the possibilities for you have boundaries that you can't cross. It may also appear that you got dealt a bad hand; as a result, you're doomed to live your life by those standards. None of that really matters though because everyone makes their own decisions and their own choices. You have to decide what you're going to make of your life and accept the consequences.

You may think it's a lot harder for you or a lot easier - and maybe it is. The thing is, you make your own fate and lay out your future through your day to day actions. It is your responsibility and your's alone. You can not blame the outcome on anyone but yourself and you cannot make excuses. Many great people in history overcame all obstacles to do what they knew they had to do. However, many others could have done much, but didn't. Both types of people made their own destiny and both lived with it because that is the only thing there is to do. "You are the master of your fate: The captain of your soul" and you must live day to day, remembering this truth and acting accordingly.