Here you are again, she said

In her memoir Unsinkable, former Olympic rower Silken Laumann writes this passage about the interconnection between destiny and choice in each person’s life:

I have a belief . . . that goes something like this: Each of our lives is a book already written whose chapters have multiple endings. Depending on the choices we make, a chapter goes in one direction or another, but the book’s narrative moves forward with a relentless rhythm and aspects of inevitability. The things we are meant to do appear again and again in our story, until we recognize our responsibility and accept the challenge. No matter how hard we try to avoid them, or back away because we are scared or unwilling, they keep showing up in various incarnations.

What strikes me most about this passage is the latter part about how “the things we are meant to do” appear again and again in our personal story, in our thoughts, in our dreams and visions. I am experiencing this phenomenon right now: a certain person keeps popping up in my life story. I like to think that this person’s recurring presence is happening for a reason, because there is some inevitable yet unknown place that we are supposed to go together. Only time — and perhaps our own individual choices — will tell.

 

Tags: choice, decision, destiny, inevitability, life, relationships, Silken Laumann, story