You’re empowered to make choices and decisions to live your life.Photo by Tim Bogdanov on Unsplash

Who is living your life? Is there anyone else inside of your mind, body, and soul? Can another person climb inside of your head, heart, and spirit and live your life? No.

Yet an almost overwhelming narrative from various influencers, leaders, and instructors paints a different picture. They offer a vision of a specific, monochromatic viewpoint of what’s best for everyone. Given that all 8 billion people on Planet Earth are different and unique, this doesn’t hold water.

So they try to shove their perspective on you and me. This is done in both subtle and blatant ways. Advertising, distractions, the blame game. All of these are in the world to get us in line with someone else’s perspective for how it should be.

You are empowered, however, to make your own choices and decisions. Yet, this also comes with its own pitfalls and challenges. What if you make the wrong choice? If you decide on “X” and it turns out “Y” was better, how much will you suffer?

So “they” suggest, instead, that you let “them” be your guide. Allow that politician, influencer, teacher, guru, or guide to show you the way, and you’ll reach a place of contentment.

But then you find that you’re discontent, uncomfortable, and uneasy because you didn’t truly choose that path. Now what?

Make choices and decisions for yourself

When you allow anyone other than yourself to choose for you, specifically in a non-collaborative, non-consenting way, distress will follow. That’s because you are the only one in your head, heart, and soul. Ergo, you alone know who, what, why, how, and why you desire to be. Only you understand your thoughts, feelings, intentions, approach, and actions.

No matter how deeply you get to know someone, or how close you become, they aren’t in you. They cannot see out your eyes, feel your feelings, hear what you hear, know your aches and pains, experience what pleases you, and so on.

When you allow someone other than you to dictate any aspect of your life, without collaboration, such as with a lover or friend, you’ll end up frustrated and disheartened. You’ll find yourself questioning things because you didn’t make a conscious choice and landed in unfamiliar or uncertain territory.

Yes, this is “woke”. And I cannot for the life of me fathom why anyone prefers to be asleep and ignorant instead of awake and aware. Does anyone genuinely want to cede all control over their life? Maybe in certain moments and at some times, sure. But there always comes a reckoning when you will desire to take the wheel and be in control. In the end, you crave wakefulness.

Making your own choices and decisions is how you take the control you can. The control over who, what, where, how, and why inside yourself.

Photo by Gordon Cowie on UnsplashAwake and aware empowers you

If you’re lucky, you’ll get about 80 years to experience this life. If, as I postulate, the meaning of life is TO LIVE – as in to experience all the ups, downs, and isness of existing – then doesn’t choosing what you can seem more pleasing than ceding power to others? Do you want to just go through the motions, subconscious rather than consciously aware?

To be fair, there are times letting rote, routine, and habit drive is worthwhile. There are certainly times when letting automation run its course is how you get through some challenges, necessities, and obligations. But not all the time.

Awake and aware beats asleep and ignorant because it’s empowering. This is the difference between being open to potential and possibility rather than being closed off due to fear of uncertainty and hopelessness.

There are three primary options for how you experience life.

Let life live you. Mostly go with the flow, allow rote, routine, habit, and the various forces of the world to have their way with you, seldom choosing any given path.Curl up in a ball and await death. Live in fear, rue “those others” who take what you think is yours, pray for the future, lament the lost past, ignore the here and now.Take the wheel and drive life. Apply mindfulness – active conscious awareness – to make choices and experiences for your life.

Everyone will flit between these three options along the way. But mindfully choosing and deciding makes you awake and aware and presents lots more options, potential, and possibilities to experience.

Be here now, awake and aware

One of the other major issues with “they” and “them” seeking to drive your life for you is how they focus on the past and future. They look back to a past that never truly existed (like the one where only white males mattered) because it was purer, wiser, better, greater, or some equal bullshit. From that non-existent past, they present a vision of a future that’s often exclusive, limited, lacking – unless you’re one of the chosen few (which, they suggest, you can be – if you cede your life to them).

What about the now? That’s the key. Here and now is the only time that’s really, truly, real. Only the present is genuine, authentic, and where you can choose and decide anything.

The past has come and gone and can’t be changed. The future is unknown and always in motion. But here and now, you can identify what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, your intentions, if your approach is positive or negative, and actions to take. Be here now, awake and aware, and you open yourself to experience all that life has to offer.

Yes, some of that will suck. There will be pain and suffering to one degree or another. But there will also be pleasure and joy. Remaining asleep and ignorant means you cede your empowerment and leave yourself open to being depressed, fearful, uncertain, wondering what it is you’re missing, and other discomforts.

The choices and decisions are yours. Wouldn’t you prefer to be awake and aware over being asleep and ignorant? Even when it’s painful, I believe it’s still preferable.

This is the seventh-hundred-twenty-third (723) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.

I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.

Thank you for joining me. Feel free to repost and share this.

The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out my author website for the rest of my published fiction and nonfiction works.

The post Wouldn’t You Prefer Awake and Aware Over Asleep and Ignorant? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.