Forrest Gump’s mother always said that life is like a box of chocolates. My own mother said life is what you make it. With myself, however, I’m not really sure. Growing up in the Catholic faith, I was trained to be a strong believer in fate and the hand of God playing a large role in my future. At the same time, dozens of self help books, teachers, and mentors have told me I am the creator of my own future. If I desire something, the universe has given me the resources and strength to set out and achieve it.

I look around and see success everywhere. When I turn on the TV, the multi-millionaire actor who started out as a YouTuber sitting in a messy bedroom on a blurry camcorder flashes a toothy grin at me. I open up the book written by an aspiring 11th grade author, and listen to a 17 year old Grammy winner on the radio. With figures like this, success seems an attainable thing in todays world. But then, I see the other side of the wall.

Thousands of dedicated, hard working veterans line the streets of Washington D.C, homeless, and on their fourth day without a warm meal. The loving, intelligent mother who went to four years of college and passed all of her exams sits up at night wondering how she can pay the bills for next month. The girl with hopes and dreams of becoming a dancer lies in a hospital bed is told she cannot walk again. Why do these things happen? Is there some almighty plan guiding us through life, or are we puppets in the hand of fate?

I work hard, and I get things done. I am kind, and polite, and I eat my fruits and vegetables. However, I cannot help thinking about an accident that might happen when I get into a car, and look down at every mosquito that bites me and wonder if it is carrying the West Nile Virus. I watch documentaries like “Monsters Inside Me” on Discovery Channel and wonder, am I going to be in the next 1 out of 1000 Americans infected with E Coli because I ate that supermarket sushi the other day?

Then again, there are days when I can’t help but feel that there is an almighty being above. For every time I get out of the car unharmed, or wake up healthy, is there some kind of guardian angel at my side? There are so many wonderful people that have been brought into my life - and when I sit and look at the friends I have been blessed with, I wonder if it is fate that have brought them into my life at the right time. When I have someone who understands me, or just invites me over because they can, or stays up at night to talk or listen, I wonder how the universe knew that I needed them and their actions at just that time.

Many people picture death as a hand or an angel. Something that reaches down and grabs us when we are overripe, and takes us to the afterlife in a lumbering black coach. Others see death for what it truly is - a deadly bacteria, a sinister tumor, or a weakening of the human body to the point where it slowly slips away. Sometimes we see it coming, far in advance. A slow goodbye, one where we watch our loved ones walk themselves into the sunset. Other times, it is sudden, like a bolt of lightening. A healthy 17 year old girl leaves to work, only to meet up hood-first with a drunk driver in a busy intersection. Is there really anything we can do to protect ourselves from the wispy shawl of eternal sleep?

I know the depths of my mind like an old man knows every callous and ridge on his hands after a lifetime of work. I have had my periods of darkness, happiness, learning, fear, pride, and love. Each one of these emotions is as powerful as the last. The question is one of how much control I have over the emotions that intertwine and latch themselves on to various stages of my being. Can I control who I love, or what I fear? Is happiness achieved by wishing it, or willing it? Or are these emotions controlled and handled by some outer force that skin cannot touch, and that hands cannot grab?

Who is fate? A man? A woman? Perhaps fate is a child, who does not know of his consequences. Is fate a pre-written journey taken to reach our own inner nirvana, or is fate a fork in the road in which the universe does not decide our path? Perhaps fate is a mother, protecting us from the unknown, which only she can see. Perhaps she cares for us, and leans us towards the right decision, masking herself as the human conscience.

In the same way, do we face control over the fates of other’s whose paths intertwine in our own? Does a mother control the fate of her children? The decisions she makes surely must have some effect on the way her children grow and live their lives. But in the same way, they are their own person, and have their own thoughts, existential and not. They make decisions, and they move their pieces on the board. Does a friend who spends long nights talking to another influence the way they live their life? The thoughts they think? It amazes me that perhaps a person can change at the mercy of another person - regardless of them being two separate entities.

Is a soul in relation to our other organs? In purely physiological terms, we are a 3 pound brain piloting a slab of meat. But what part of us feels? Emotes? Staggers in pain, and convulses in memory? What part of us causes us to cringe at our mistakes? Is our conscious interconnected with our fate? Or do we have complete control over who we are? Are we programmed to be bad? Good? Will the child who grows up in the slums automatically grow up to be a thief? And will the daughter of the rocket scientist grow up to win the Nobel Prize? Do we control that?

…

I used to lay awake at night. These thoughts were the leaves kicked up in the soft autumn gusts, the kinds that make funicular dances in the lawns close to Halloween. They whistled in my head, whispered into my nerves. I couldn’t tell if my heart was the victim or the attacker; each day, it seemed to fill each roll. Then, as the sunset is stalled in savings time, the thoughts packed up their bags and moved. They kicked their nocturnal habits and followed me into the day.

“The beginning of the equation of a conical figure is (x-k)^2…” The teacher’s voice floats away as my head begins to wander.

It’s the middle of the day, and the disconnect is front and center. Puzzled, I try and shake the thoughts. But like a fly caught in the web, I always return to the center of the danger zone. My thoughts are the most powerful weapon working towards me, and yet now they take this moment to work against me. I am mauled by metaphors, and ripped apart by vicious analogy. I live as a slave to prose, and my inquiry keeps me on autopilot.

Just like the ink of my journal pages smudges into swirling water when the corner of my book slips into the bath, my thoughts are not solid. They ebb and flow, sometimes central, sometimes far back in the inner crevices of my mind. I cannot control which are prevalent, and what time they prevail. Like a lone wolf, they move in silence and prey on my silence in their choosing. Like a fox in a trap, the last bit of control over my mind looks out painfully, and then receives its fate.

The therapist will call me a daydreamer, and the teacher will call me creative. The parents will call me imaginative, and the friends will call me spacey. I however, consider myself trapped. I am not myself, only held inside of myself, trying desperately to claw my way out of autopilot, and take the wheel of my own life, thoughts, and decisions for the first time.