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What Is Life?
What is life? The glistening sparkle of the proud rolling wave, which today wears her emerald glass and is tomorrow but sea foam washed up upon the shoreline.
More important than what happens to a person in life is how a person handles what happens to them in life. 
There are three sister fates every surfer, wave and living thing on earth and in the universe are subject to. One fate is birth or beginning, the other is the death or the end and the third fate is everything that happens in between. Man can no more prevent fate from happening in life than a surfer can stop a tsunami wave from coming to shore.
The first sister of fate decides where and when we come into this world and sets the direction of our lives in motion whether we know it or not. But alas she doesn’t stop there; she is the fate of new experiences, chance encounters, fresh ideas and so on. When two ships set out in the night she decides if they will meet or not.
The first sister of fate works closely with the second sister of fate. Beginning and end go hand in hand for wherever there is a new beginning something has to end. For the day to begin the night has to end. For a surfer to catch a new wave he has to first dismount the old one. If a man’s car stops working he has to start walking. Just as there is an ending before every new beginning there is a new beginning after every ending.
The third sister of fate helps determine everything that happens in between the beginning and end. Let’s say two separate surfers start out on a surfing trip. One ends up having a smooth journey arriving just in time to catch the best waves of the year. The other has a flat tire along the way and after discovering the spare doesn’t hold air has to hitch hike the rest of the way. By the time the second surfer arrives the swell of the year is over and bad weather makes surfing impossible.
To a very large degree all life is determined less by talent, brains and good looks and more by simple fate. There is no getting around it fate has a hand in everything that happens in life one way or another. The sisters of fate are behind whom we meet in life, where we grow up, what we end up doing for a living, even basic things such as what country we live in as well as the language we speak.
While it appears the three sisters of fate have almost complete control of our lives there is one thing and only one thing they do not control and that is freewill. We may not be able to decide the time and place of our birth or change the color of our eyes through sheer will power or have control over myriads of other things but we do have the ability to control how we react to what we have no control over.
Life may very well be determined by fate but it is defined by freewill. Fate is the unavoidable things that happen to us along the way; freewill is the way we choose to handle what happens to us along the way. What happens to you does not determine who you really are how you react to it does.
There was a young boy who grew up right next to the ocean. Had he been born in another place and time he may have had a different destiny but as fate would have it he didn’t. Being as his father and brothers were all surfers as well as many of his friends it was natural that he became a surfer.
Over the years the young boy began to grow up, becoming stronger and greatly improving his surfing abilities. From the time he was a teenager he new what he wanted to become when he grew up and that was a professional surfer. As time went on he got better and better, he seemed destined to live his dream that is until fate once again stepped in.
The young man wiped out on a particularly powerful wave and in doing so smashed his face as well as his dreams of becoming a professional surfer into the rocky bottom below.
With every ending there is a new beginning. Instead of trying to fight against fate the young surfer decided to keep surfing for love and do something else for a living and that was music.
Had he have not had a surfing accident Jack Johnson may never have become the professional musician he is. Today his music is ubiquitous, he has hit selling c.d.’s appears in movies and on television shows and appears to be destined for musical greatness all because of a fateful surfing accident.
Everyone is subject to the fickle hand of fates but of even more importance to what happens to you in life is how you handle.
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