I was blessed my freshman year of college to meet three amazing people. It’s been three years since then, yet I can still say that these are three of the best people I have ever known. I am so proud of them and I count myself lucky to be considered their friend. At this point in time their lives are very different from mine. They pursue dreams, see awesome places, and touch hearts. This afternoon as I was looking through their pictures I found myself wondering about my own life. There is a wonderful concept we always talk about called agency—the gift to choose. While we often apply this with an eternal perspective, sometimes we forget that the beauty of agency lies in our own temporary, mortal lives. We all choose what paths we take in life; we all choose who we become. On afternoons like this one I find myself asking, of all the paths I could have taken why did I choose this one? I see my life as extremely ordinary. Why am I like the ordinary bargain book in the bookstore? Why not like the exotic travel books, or thrilling mysteries, or compelling adventures? I certainly see my three friends this way. They seem so full of life—so ready to be filled when empty, so eager to give when full. They are the Sherlock Holmes and the Lemuel Gullivers, while I feel more like the dimestore novel—so predictable in every way. In many ways I merely survive my life while others live theirs.
Each person chooses their course in life based on what they want at the crux of life-altering decisions. Then somewhere down the path we look back and wonder why we chose the way we did or how our lives are different than they would have been. When I was 17 I chose to come to BYU. Because of that choice I met my friends, discovered two of my very few passions, and fell in love. When I was 20 I chose to get married. Because of that choice I understand more about love than I ever have before and more about fear and hardship than I wanted to before.
My professor asked us the other day, “How are books like people and people like books?” At first I wasn’t sure what to think, but now I feel that we are all books, our pages filled with the decisions that change our lives and make us the genre we are. The narrative of our lives is who we become as our own story unfolds before us.
“Stand and unfold yourself.”
~Hamlet Act I scene I
