CHAPTER I
EVERY PERSON’S LIFE IS A STORY
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e write the story of our lives. Each moment we fill up the story with the contents of our life experiences. The characters and settings in the story are chosen and decided by us. We are at the heart of the story. Each one of us is the hero in the story. There is no villain because everything evolves and revolves around the writer of the story. Whatever we do in our life story is our own individual responsibility. We are accountable for it whether we like it or not. Your mommy and daddy can not make your future because it all depends on the choices and decisions that you make at various times, on different occasions and in diverse aspects of your lives, for example, in how you relate with people, your learning ways, and how you optimally use your time and space.
We narrate our story to people around us. Our story is told through our actions and reactions to the circumstances of life. Our story begins by how we make out the events and things that we encounter at the moment. We must be aware where we get the filter through which we experience our world. These filters are made up of thoughts and emotions that play up as we interact with people and internalize the conditions and events that are happening around us. Our personal lenses are our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, manners, and point of views. These personal lenses through which we see the world are not something external that are apart from our mind and body, but something that is found within us. It is our internal environment which projects outward when we deal with the external environment.
In any story, there is a plot, pace, characters, and incidents. The plot of our life is initially determined by the genes of our parents. We got fifty percent each of the genes of our daddy and mommy and inherited their combined traits. Our hereditary traits are then modified by the food and nutrients that we received while still in mommy’s uterus during foetal development process and subsequently by our exposure to the external environment after birth.
We did not select the identity of our parents and their relatives, the manner of our upbringing, the place of our residence, our education, neighborhood, and other places of social contacts, and external environments which have profound impact on the development of our personality. However, as we reach the age of majority, we utilize our free will a lot; we become responsible and accountable for the consequences of our choices. As we grow older, the plots, pace and incidents in our story are the things, conditions and events that we caused to happen.
At a certain
point in life, we take complete control of the writing of our story. Our story
begins with an idea which could be triggered by certain needs and wants within
us. This idea that we conceived determines the plot of our story and largely
directs the things, conditions and events that occur. Necessity is known to be
the mother of all inventions. Every development in the history of mankind
starts from an idea. This idea is like a seed that is planted in the soil. The
seed germinates, grows into a tree, and then bears fruits. To be the captain of
our own life, it helps to remember the saying “Whatever we can conceive we can
achieve.” Your success entirely depends on how you see yourself and how you
project yourself to the world at large. Nothing is impossible to a person who
has the energy of the Supreme Being in one’s heart. As late as the middle of
the 20th century, many people would still ridicule the idea of man
walking in the moon. However, in July 1969, the
The plots reveal our character in the way we relate to the things, conditions and events in our life. Our character is etched in how our deed and action respond to our life situations. If we do not walk our talk, we would not be a person of character. People will not take your words on its face value for long unless they see some congruency between what you say and what you do. It is misleading to characterize a person according to the duality of good or bad because we have the tendency to be both. Through education, reflections, and prayers however, we learn to control, suppress or manage our negative thoughts in order to do good according to the existing moral and religious standards.
The pace of our story is dictated by our goals and aspirations. As our desires changes we become more conscious of time and its passing. Young people find the pace of life in childhood slow, and they eagerly wait for the coming of years to grow and gain more freedom. This happens because they want to explore the world but are limited in their movements by their guardians, education, skills and experience of the world. People usually live along a time line of past, present and future, thinking that the past will determine the present, and the present will create the future. However, this is not true because our perception does not exist in this linear time continuum. The present always determine the relevance of the past and the future. Just think of people who have a dark past but have become successful.
The character of the person is a reflection of one’s value systems, i.e. social, economic, business, political, environmental, medical, scientific, religious, moral, spiritual, and other values. We acquired these values from our parents and other persons who exercise moral ascendancy over us during our childhood and adolescence years, from school, books and other materials that we read or heard, from our neighborhoods, from our interactions with the society at large and other life’s experiences. These values have different hierarchy in each individual according to one’s beliefs and convictions. For example, to some people the value of social justice is more important than business profit, or the religious value of procreation far outweighs the medical value of artificial birth control.
Legislators should also have a keen awareness and understanding of their own value systems prior to engaging in legislative deliberation. By having a good grasp of the values which they consider important, they would be able to organize their priorities and do first things first. This will enable them to pass good and well-balanced laws which will ultimately affect diverse interests of various sectors within our society that has complex and intermingling structure.
The story of our individual life is indeed very interesting because it is a composite collection of our experiences with different people and the values that were inculcated in us by our interactions. These circumstances made each one of us a unique individual.