Where we are in our lives today is essentially the end results of two seperate series of actions that run alongside each other. One is based on our own internal decision making and how we react to the situations we are faced with and the other are the external events over which we have absolutely no control. Making the distinction between them both is very important.
What is difficult to comprehend is that what happens to us today could be traced back to borderline decisions made hundreds, ne thousands of years ago. The future changes with any decision any of us make no matter how trivial it seems in the greater scheme of things.
If we think back to the London bombings in July 2005 we can look at many people's lives completely changed, not just for the unfortunates who were killed and injured, but for the family and friends who have had to deal with the aftermath. In fact we've all been affected in some ways because our attitudes will change with respect to travelling in London and what we feel for certain members of society, it can't not have an impact.
The fate of a young Polish woman killed in the blasts affected me more than most as our paths so nearly crossed. Katarina Gluck was an administrator at the William Goodenough College, a location where my company were to stage a conference a few weeks later.
What happened to her that day could've been so different. A decision whereby she may have hit the radio alarm snooze button instead of getting up straightaway or pausing to watch the weather report on TV or stopping to give someone directions may have impacted whether she was on that particular tube train on that terrible day. Trains pass through the stations every few minutes and it doesn't take much to find that we've inadvertently put ourselves in a danger zone.
We mustn't dwell on the ifs and buts as we'd never leave the house but we should note that there are things we simply cannot do anything about. If we deal with what we can change - our thoughts and our decisions - we take the pressure off ourselves.
We will never know if we will have to face a situation like poor Katarina but we can at least be confident in knowing that if we focus on what we can change we will have done all we can in our goal to where we want to be in our lives. Blaming others - even the bombers in this instance - is not going to change anything however difficult to accept that is. It is our reaction to those events that will determine the future direction of humanity.
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