Life Happens

In a perfect world, life would be a puppet that we could master. We could control the events we experience every day, so that life could be as perfect as we wanted it to be. However, perfection doesn’t exist. Life is unpredictable and there are very few aspects of it that we can control. Life happens, whether or not it works out according to our plans.

Life comes with many strings attached. As a parent, we aspire to raise our children to honor, love and respect themselves as well as others through our love, protection and guidance. These strings attached soon break as they grow older and have to make decisions on their own. There are many times we wish we could save them from mistakes we foresee them making… pull their strings as though they are puppets, to avoid heartbreak and failure. However, we have to watch them fall with the hopes they’ll rise… knowing we will pick them up if they need us to, dust them off and help them move forward.

If we were the masters of life as our puppet, there would be no pain, no heartache, no tears and no tragedies. Our hearts would never feel the pain that life tends to bring us. Our bodies would never hurt from injuries sustained in the various accidents that occur daily. We would never suffer the loss of a loved one and we could really spend forever with the people we vow to that we would.

Even though we live in a society that has made dating an incredibly casual activity, love will always come with strings attached. Even the most jaded are still human and feel emotions when it comes to matters of the heart. One can try to enter into a situation where there are claims that it will be solely sexual with “no strings attached”, but someone (if not both people) will get attached and someone will get hurt. We can convince ourselves that we’re just having fun and enjoying the casual lifestyle, but when you mix passion, emotional and intellectual connections with being human, someone will always want more than someone else may be willing to give. In the game of love, the strings will always either be attached or for some, constantly played with until one ends it and moves on to someone else.

Life will always come with strings attached. With every string, we learn something about life, but also, something about ourselves. When our strings are pulled tight, we may not be able to control what has happened to us, but we have complete control as to how we respond to it. When our strings are let go or broken, we have to build our strength to grow from the experience and move forward the better things that lie ahead of us. When our strings are attached to someone that no longer serves a positive purpose in our lives, we have to remove ourselves from that relationship and set our strings free to be able to attach them to someone that better suits us. We may not be able to live life without strings attached, but our attachments, our experiences, no matter how bad or amazing, contribute to our crazy, sometimes tragic, beautiful story of life.