Is The World Really What You Make of It?

Do you ever feel a map is waiting to be acknowledged?
Not just created, as if maybe it already exists and you are just waking up in the middle of your life to the fact that you have probably been walking a path that was pre-set a very indeterminate long time ago - maybe a time ago?

Bilbo Baggins finds a ring, keeps his "precious" safe, hidden for what would be a lifetime, then carelessly or semi-unconsciously allows the ring to surface and through a series of unfortunate events, uproots the course of Middle Earth.  Or did he?

Maybe what was going to happen was always going to happen - it needn't have been Bilbo, it could have been found by the next generation of a later middle-aged Frodo desirous of following in the footsteps of his much revered, curious and cartography-creating uncle.

When Beethoven composed Moonlight Sonata, when Bach conceived of Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring, or Rachmaninoff brought to life any of his concerti - was it just creative genius or could it be that everything was already there: the combination and order of notes, their lengths, speed and strengths, their softness, even the silences in-between - all of it?  Were these sublime works of art just pulled down, let's say, from the heavens, already shaped and formed, pre-created, just waiting for the most right ear that could not only hear them, but transcribe them - albeit through the unique filter of those musicians - for the rest of us to enjoy?

Is it that "filter" that allows us to imagine our fate is in each our own hands, that, the world is, indeed, what we make of it?


Was there ever a time you felt you were not quite living a life free, of choice, that you seem to be marking a path moving in a direction or at a speed or in a way you could not control, or a trajectory you could not change?  And so, like riding a wild horse with no reins for control, you held on as tight as possible, determined to, at least, keep upright, you stayed on that seemingly, though unseen, pre-set road.

Where were you dropped off at the end of it, and, were you able to get back on solid ground/right footing, taking back the ownership of the map of your life, again?

Tell me your story...