“I’m Not Going With You. I’m Going My Own Way!”

When you hear a 3-year old girl say that, with her childlike innocence, completely unburdened with the realities of everyday life, you perhaps cannot help smiling at such a scene. And neither could I.

But when you hold onto that statement for a little longer and forget about who you have just heard it from, you might quite unwittingly find yourself reflecting on you own life. And I dare say, from time to time, we all tend to do so.

Think of your life as a road, long and winding, full of obstacles and road forks scattered all along. Now imagine it being a road which is one-way only and which once taken you cannot walk back. No second chances, no corrections possible… No wonder, one can sometimes find life pretty scary.

How many of us have already tried to walk their own way, just to find out it was not as easy as we had expected? And when faced with the decision to go left or right, how many times have we chosen to go one way only to regret it later on, wishing we had gone the other way instead?

And that is what our life is, a seemingly endless road with countless twists and turns, many of which are later discovered to have been wrong choices or bad decisions made. Most of us, if not all, make rather more mistakes than not, but not all of us tackle them in the same manner.

There are people who always blame their failures on others, as if to say that they took their road because they were told to and therefore the results of that decision do not lie with them. They are never guilty, they are always right and equally forever miserable and unhappy, making such those around them, too.

These people are never really free in their lives with the chains of fate unbroken, unlike those who understand that resulting actions are always a direct consequence of their own decisions, be they good or bad. They own to them, they do not point their finger at others, and they bear the consequences bravely, no matter what.

And it is this attitude which turns even bad decisions into a good result because regardless of the miseries in one’s life, admitting to the fact that the current troubles are the outcome of their own actions, such people are making it abundantly clear to all, that they are free men, exercising their free will. That it is them who chose the way they went and that they did so freely, ready to pay for it, should it be required.

But as to our little girl, she only says it for the moment’s sake, and perhaps for the amusement of her parents’ or an unexpected stranger’s who, at that moment, happens to be passing by.