A belief

I have lived my life with many beliefs.  It has recently become clear to me that one of my beliefs is in contrary to another.  At this point in my life, I am finding much solace in the idea that everything happens for a reason.  As I look back on my life, I see so many things that have not gone as planned, yet if these things were changed, I would not be the person today that I can say I am proud to be.  Whether or not the idea of things being preordained or not aside, I would not change what has put me where I am.  

When I was younger, I gave up hope on a lot of things.  I gave up hope even that I could find meaning in my life as an individual.  I believed this so surely that I chose to live a life as much for others as I could.  Teaching, giving, my aloof and let-it-be qualities are all a consequence of that most self-deprecating belief.  I decided that I was a being without purpose-- that since I could never have a life of my own, my actions were simply positive and negative on a cosmic balance sheet of zero, completely outside the bounds of fate.  I dedicated my life for good.

And now that I am growing older, I have come to realize that even these things that caused me to think that way all happened to make me into the person I am proud to say that I am.  I would not be the person I am today had they not been the way they were.  My life is a culmination of events and circumstances that make me the person that I am today.  I am not a fateless soul who can help others without consequence as I once believed.  I am a person at last in my own eyes.  That changes everything.  

As I move forward in my life, I seek now to give back so much more.  Not for others, but for me.  I seek to give now not because I feel that I don't deserve anything for myself, but because my life has forged me into a person who gains when they give.  This would not necessarily be without my life exactly as it has been.  

To wrap up this quick post, I was wrong.  I am a person.  I am here for a reason and I want to discover and deliver on that purpose as much as anyone else out there.  And life?  And life!  It has never felt so good to be alive.