Blog 2146 – 08.31.2021

“There Is No Fate, But What We Make.”

That is a line from the Terminator movie series uttered, I think, first in a deleted scene from the first movie by Sarah Connor, who would later become the mother of the hero of the resistance in the future, John Connor. There have been many twists in the story line, but the central theme has stayed true – “There is no fate, but what we make.”

Travel with me back in time, fifty-one years to be exact, to see a nineteen, almost twenty year old version of myself dressed in jungle fatigues writing letters back home to a very young wife who has decided to stop writing back, to take her life off hold, and to try to find happiness or at least some momentary pleasure with another. It is a familiar tale with a twist that made it especially painful for me. I got no “Dear John” letter. Many got them, and sad as that is, I believe it was sadder for me because I did not. I had to wait almost four months and fly home to hear the words I knew already, but refused to believe, “I just didn’t want to wait for you anymore.”

Even after she was forced by my mom to be there at the airport to meet me on my return from Vietnam and told me those words the first time we were alone, I did not want to believe that I could not change her mind and I tried for over a month to do that but failed. She had made a choice that I could not convince her to reconsider. It was not fate, it was a choice, her choice. Eventually I had to choose to move on.

We make lots of choices in our lives and they all have consequences. Those choices determine the course of our lives. That course is neither predetermined nor set in stone, but fluid and we can change it as easily as we can our hearts and our minds. I read about a young man who asked his dad how to find the right woman and his wise father told him not to concern himself with finding the right woman, but rather with becoming the right man. We draw to ourselves what we are, and we are what we think.

Part of my original shorter daily mantra that I have added to over the years says, “I am so glad and grateful that everything that I could ever want or need is already mine and coming to me at just the right time and in just the right way from my loving and infinite source.” I choose to think that, to believe that, and it is a belief that has served me well and continues to. As long as it does, I will hold on to that thought, to that belief.

At just the right time and in just the right way the right woman did finally show up in my life and I was the right man for her. We both choose to believe that we are better together than apart. For over thirty-two years we have believed that Nick of Time sung far better than I ever could by Bonnie Raitt is our song.

I conclude this encouraging word piece with,”There is no fate, but what we make” and “Thoughts become things, choose the best one.”

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FXZdG_yZ6hNw7Ct0gZGV9C8ezca0-2Ba/view?usp=drivesdk

Nick Of Time