# Chapter 219

Circumstances are powerful forces in all of our lives. Most of us find them to be all that we can handle and then some. But it is important to not be overwhelmed by the container in/of life that we find ourselves. The container of circumstances that we are ourselves living out our lives within, is not life itself. It is the context of life and it is the texture of life, but it is not life. Yet no one of us can control what happens to us. What happens happens. As I said yesterday all we can control is what happens inside of us for the most part.

But bemoaning the circumstances, the context of our lives is wasted energy for the most part. You have no control over your gender, race, ethnicity, birth order, parents, passport country, nor genetics, or a hundred other factors. This is your context, your circumstance that you will and have developed within, and it has exerted influence over you along the way, played a shaping role in how you think and what you believe and how you choose to act. I think this is unavoidable. However I think as you become aware of this fishbowl that you are cultivated within, you can choose, you can decide, you can override the circumstances of your life. You can choose what you do, where you live, whom you marry, what your eat, how you raise your kids (and thereby create their circumstances/incubators) your habits, your clothes, the health of your lifestyle. These choices alone will likely drastically alter your circumstances. These choices will forces changes on the context of your life.

Take the choices your in life, don’t allow the circumstances more power than they deserve.