Do I have a destiny? But what if...

Sometimes we wonder, don`t we, if there is a plan to our lives. Do we have a destiny, tasks to fulfill, people to meet, roles to play? Were we MEANT to be someone?

 But what if we never meet the people we should have, because we never travelled, or never found out what we should have achieved, and can`t think of a lasting deed we have done?

Is our life then wasted? And what about our free will? If we just did not FEEL like achieving anything?

Look at that young tree up there. Full of promises. Young. Healthy. Willing to grow.

And in the background the one that has already lived a while. It was clipped, cut at its ends. Not half as tall and wide as it could have been.

Is that what life does to us (gardeners, in this case)?

My father used to proclaim that children ought to be treated like plants, and be cut short, so that they grow strong.

Well, he was brought up in Nazi-Germany where that was the ideology.

I always felt strangely out of place in my family.

They said I was too delicate, I should adjust and be quiet.

But in my fantasy I was somewhere else, doing other things than I was expected to do.

Was I trying to follow "my own secret star"?

But I knew not what or where it was, and I did not dare to follow it, even if it had been clearer to me what it was.

Now that I am much older and look back, I am amazed at how things worked together to make me the one I am now. How so many of my dreams were fulfilled, but also how sometimes my route took funny turnings. Der Mensch denkt, Gott lenkt, is a wise German saying.

Man thinks, but God leads.

Is it God? Karma? The Universe? Or no one at all? Are we just taking decisions along the way and have to face the consequences?

Well, I think that every human life is a unique piece of art. Even if we sit on a chair most of our lives, contemplating, looking out of the window... we are still part of the breathing, thinking earth. Our main destiny is only to LIVE.

What we make of it has to do with our talents, our wishes, circumstances, and often the strangest, funniest coincidences! (I can tell you lots from my own life). But mainly it has to do with what we WANT our lives to be.

Here is a house whose picture I took this morning.

Look how pretty and cared-for and freshly coloures it looks.

And here is the SAME house, two years ago.It was shattered, neglected, looking fit for being torn down.

But then somebody looked at it and loved it, and was kind to it, and now it has pride again.

So, you see what I mean?

 There are roads we walk, with crossings which can lead us either way. We are able to swim rivers, climb up the other side, or take a boat and float down with the stream, that is all up to us. But if we have picture of how we WANT things to be,

we can walk through strange doors, and encounter whatever is behind that door. And we will make the things happen which we want to have in our lives.

I think it is good if we have a beautiful, kind, spirited picture of ourselves. Then, no matter how it started, or what trials it brought us, at the end we can say,

It was a good life.