Lately, it has occurred to me to venture into the business of canvas construction. How often I have neglected that particular responsibility! And not just neglected it, but rather delegated it through vague prayers directed towards the heavens. Yes, I have developed a habit of painting my life on whatever happens to appear at my doorstep. On days when no delivery arrives, I usually put away my paints.
And on days when a canvas did arrive, I'd eagerly unwrap it from its box to discover just what it was I had to work with. If a day was to truly be a gift, it had to have some element of surprise—that was my thinking then. And my freedom existed within the confines of its preset dimensions.
Maybe it was my good luck that coincidence seemed to ship so much my way...and so regularly! But, like online shopping, the convenience can also be addictive. And with the assurance that again and again, a new canvas would show, there was always the temptation to wait rather than grow. Best to remain flexible so that you can fit yourself into whatever unknown measurements lie ahead.
Lately, though, I have been asking myself: how much more effective would it have been to have first created a more detailed plan? To set life out in theory and then engage it in practice, in two distinct steps? As long as the theory is general enough to allow for the flexibility of responding to beneficial chances and coincidences as they arise, there may be much merit to this approach.
Here I sit, assessing a life defined by secondary choices, a life coming to its first close. Because now, I have been an adult long enough that I am legally able to drive the life of my adult self. Yes, looking back, I had too much of a polygamous relationship with chance. No longer will I outsource canvas construction entirely to chance; that is the road ahead I choose for myself. Like poetry no longer restricted to overly strict meter and rhyme, I announce here the beginning of my era of free verse (if not free will).