My dad, like many others, is a good source of life wisdom when the going gets tough. I go to him with a dilemma, or even just a slight uncertainty about the trajectory of my life, and he launches into a spiel that usually leaves me feeling pretty enlightened afterwards.
We have these talks anywhere, any time — in the car, watching TV, making dinner. I’ve always thought it was a special thing that he could just kind of dole out some sage Dad wisdom and send me on my merry way to make my life’s next steps. It doesn’t always have to be a long talk, either — sometimes he’s given me merely one line and it’s like a lightbulb goes off in my head.
I swear, only parents know how to do that.
While I’ve had many great pieces of advice from my father, one in particular stands out above all others. It’s something that I’ve tucked into my “Things To Live By” folder in my head. I try to embody it as I embark into the storm of my early twenties and beyond to the rest of my life.
One day, in the middle of a long talk, he turned to me and said, “Make life happen, or life happens to you.”
So what does it mean? If it hasn’t struck a chord with you immediately, I can summarize it as this: go out and chase down what you want. Take all the necessary steps and then some. Your dreams don’t fall in your lap, as much as we all wish they would.
If you’re in college, take that as an example. You had to make it happen to get there. You had to make the grades, get the scholarships, do the SATs, write the essay, fill out the grueling application.
When you graduate college, that’s the epitome of needing to make your life happen. You need to make it happen to pay your bills, save money, start a life, do what you love.
In life, you have to initiate the first steps. Always. Good opportunities can come by chance, absolutely, but always remember that there’s something you did, behind the scenes, to have put yourself in that precise position where that opportunity reached you. A lot of life can be attributed to an intricate web of happenstance, but remember that the secret to satisfaction is taking matters into your own hands.
Go out into the world and grab life by the horns. Don’t let it pass you by because you’re scared or because you don’t think you’re ready. Find the motivation, create the dedication and discipline. The concept of “the right time” isn’t always applicable. Largely, there is never a right time for anything. Stop shooting anxious glances at the clock, waiting for the seconds to tick down to the right moment. Stop flipping through the calendar, plotting for the right day.
Make it happen. Don’t look back on your life and say it happened to you.
