D is for Destiny

When you come across a novel with a title like Escaping Destiny, it's fairly safe to assume that the author spends a good deal of time thinking about fate, destiny, and the nature of our journey through life.

WARNING: Doing so has a tendency to drive you slightly mad.

In the novel, one of the main characters is responsible for navigating the days ahead and keeping those in his care safe from harm.  Overwhelmed by the choices before him, Kai finds himself questioning everything - his choices; his path; whether he has any say at all or if his destiny is already chiseled in stone.

Kai closed his eyes, raising his face to the sky, the weight of the road before him weighing heavily on his spirit.  "So what do I do?"
He felt the woman he loved turn to face him, kneeling on the earth before him.  When he opened his eyes he found her smiling at him, ready to meet his gaze.
"You follow your heart," she reminded him, the corners of her mouth turned up in a promise that everything would turn out alright.  "You do what you believe is right and choose the path where you stay true to yourself.  If you do that," she swore, "whatever the outcome of the days ahead, you will look back and realize that you have no regrets."

That simple advice, "You follow your heart," is so key to everything I do.  Things don't always turn out the way I hope they will.  Sometimes it seems as if following your heart is the sign that points you down the road hidden in shadows and debris while the other choice is paved, well lit... and wrong.  As the passage above reminds us, when you follow your heart, "... whatever the outcome of the days ahead, you will look back and realize that you have no regrets."

There's a saying in my world:  "Your heart is your map and your intuition your compass.  Follow them."  Every other choice before us can ultimately be traced back to another person's words.  It doesn't matter if they're speaking from a book, a pulpit, a televised program, or from where they stand right next to you.  Even when we seek advice, it's useful to place those words inside your heart and see if they match the map you hold.

We aren't always able to see our heart map clearly.  That's where our intuition comes in.  If we slow down and allow ourselves to feel the situation, if we look at our map and imagine ourselves taking different routes across it, each one feels different.  That's our intuition - the compass we use to navigate the map of our heart.

The path we find may not be a simple choice - or an easy road to walk down.  But if we follow our heart, if we stay true to ourselves, "whatever the outcome of the days ahead, you will look back and realize you have no regrets."