Choice and Contending

On the topic of destiny, someone once said to me that it was a comfort that destiny was chosen.

[An aside: Many ATRs hold that you chose what you are going to do in this lifetime.]

And since I do not like, my first thought was 'you're crazy'. My first response was "if that makes you feel good, hey, well."

I muttered to myself about it later, trying to make sense of the statement. A comfort.

Maybe, just maybe, your concept of comfort is not the same as mine.

After a long time of thinking about that, I decided that I did understand what they were seeing.

It provided more purpose to their life in some ways. They chose. They did. It was more meaningful to have made that decision, to have exercised control, for themselves - even if they couldn't remember making the decision. It was a form of self-empowerment.

[Yet another aside: broadly, ATRs also hold that passing through the womb is to pass through the waters of forgetfulness and that one is tasked with finding and effectuating their destinies here on earth. Exact details will vary.]

I don't disparage the comfort this can provide. If that helps you, please do take it (and maybe read no further lol). I, personally, think this framing may help a lot of people.

Me, on the other hand, I was not comforted by this.

Why the hell did I choose this? That doesn't even make any sense for who I am today and for the foreseeable future.

The math is NOT mathing, baby, and I'm annoyed about it.

Do I not like myself? Am I secretly a masochist?

(And you know, for how often I argue? Yeah maybe a little bit on a spiritual level but still!)

It means that the things that are happening to me… I did them to myself. I walked into a conversation, things were good and cool; I walked out feeling like I wrestled a possum, a racoon then decided to take my best shot at fighting an orca.

From the year between me first hearing that and now, I decided that I just didn't care as a general position. Sometimes you screw up. Sometimes it be your own, namely you. That's okay.

It's okay or it will be okay as long as one day, I get an answer for some of this nonsense.

What I need to be comforted is an explanation - even if it's lowkey kind of a bullshit answer. It's helpful to piece together what is happening.

I had to contend with these to understand what makes me most comfortable. And frankly, on a bad day, I'm still contending.

All of this to say, sometimes it's okay to still be contending.