You Can Choose

I took a deep breath to calm myself down. It wasn’t the first time I had done a digital interview, but it didn’t matter how many I did or didn’t do. I was always nervous before starting. 

After a few minutes, I finally got the courage to turn on my laptop and go into the meeting room. I was let in almost immediately. Just as quickly, I felt my heart rate increase and my body get hot.

I closed my eyes and took deep breaths. I zeroed in on that feeling in my chest until it finally went away and my body relaxed.

An image popped up on the screen and I could see my interviewer now. After sharing the normal pleasantries, we started the live stream.

It went smoothly, with the usual background questions so the viewers could know a little more about me. And then, we got into the good stuff.

“So, you have said before that the best way for people to live their lives and make things easier is to flow with life. How so? And how did you do it?”, my interviewer, Yana, an up-and-coming spiritual leader, asked.

I smiled. There were so many things I wanted to say but there wasn’t enough time. Instead, I opened myself up to my Higher Self and asked what the most beneficial thing would be to say to the people tunning in.

Not even 5 seconds had passed when I felt the familiar sense of calm wash over me accompanied by one word: Difficult.

“Well, there are a lot of things involved in learning how to flow with life”, I began, “But, I’ll tell you a short story and maybe it’ll make a bit more sense”.

I shifted in my chair, it was starting to hurt my bum sitting in the same position for too long.

“I was watching a music video on YouTube and this ad popped up”, I recalled.

“I was exasperated”, I continued, “I had had a long day and I didn’t want to deal with a YouTube then. I tried to skip it as fast as I could but, like many YT ads, I had to wait five seconds before the ‘Skip’ button appeared”.

“In those five seconds the words ‘We are living in difficult times’ were said”, I remembered how my chest and throat had tightened up upon seeing the image of the girl in the surgical mask. It had been a sensitive topic all around, one that I was hoping would go away quickly.

But people just kept bringing it up, judging and attacking others. It didn’t matter on what side you were on; we were being torn up by lack of compassion.

 Remembering this was what led the anger in me to rise until I was almost heaving and found it difficult to take a normal breath.

“I immediately got angry”, I said. At the time, my hands had closed into tight fists. I had had to fight in order not to let the desire to hit something consume me.

“I got angry because”, I shrugged and smiled, “According to the news and other people, we’re always living in hardship”.

I laughed and said, “Every generation, every year even, someone reminds us that these are hard times”.

And it seemed to me, at the time, that someone was always making something up just to say and keep repeating that we were always living in hardship and we would never get out of it.

“Whatever happened, and it didn’t matter if it was the smallest thing, we were automatically living in hard times!”, I said excitedly, “And we should be more thoughtful and discerning.”

My parents and family were also guilty of this. They always said things like: "Things are bad out there now", "When I was young, it was all so much better and easier".

It was fine if they said it a couple of times but they said it every time. As I got older, I noticed that every single one of my family members said the same thing, no matter what their age was or when they had grown up.

Slowly, I began to wonder if there was an actual period where things hadn't been so 'bad out there' . I wondered if we could even get to a happy place like that.

The more I heard that things were bad or difficult, and no one bothered to provide a solution, instead choosing to marinate in despair or just accepting things as they were, the more it weighed down on me.

“I was just so tired of it”, I sighed, “When were we going to get a break? When would the hard times end? And who was the one who decided that?”

At the time, the desperation was almost eating me alive. I didn’t want to be trapped, I wanted to be free. It was something I had searched for all of my life and I wasn’t willing to give it up just because someone else wanted to force me to live in hardship with them.

“Then, I remembered my teacher”, I genuinely smiled here, “She had once said to us that we needed to choose to believe or not to believe.”

“But”, I wanted to clarify, “It wasn’t the believing part that moved me. It was the choosing part”.

“I had the ability to choose”, I remembered how an immense feeling of relief washed over me at this realization, “I could choose to not live in these so-called ‘difficult times’ that we always seem to be living in. I could do that and create a brand-new reality, an easier and more flowing life”.

“That’s exactly what I did”, my eyebrows shot upward as I said this, “That day I chose not to live in difficult times.”

“And it came true because I said so. So, it was and so it still is”, I gave the camera a smile and bowed my head over my praying hands as I said this and hoped that this had inspired the audience to finally take their power back and stand in their sovereignty.