Can You Choose the Genre of Your Life?

I met a guy the other day. Let’s call him Ben.

We got to talking and he told me a bit about himself:

He’s 23 years old. When he was 19, he started dating a girl, she was 17 at the time – a month into the relationship, her father found out and made them get married. After the wedding, the girl totally changed, she made Ben’s life hell, and after three years and a kid, they got divorced.

It’s been a year since the divorce. He wants to be an engineer, but that isn’t a realistic option for him right now. Instead, he’s stuck in a dead-end job.

His ex still has it out for him. He has a kid to take care of. Wonderful kid, but still. Ben’s in a pretty crummy situation. He’s just starting his life and he’s got all this baggage.

But you know the funny thing? You’d never know it by looking at him. And it’s even harder to believe after talking with him.

Source: Krzysztof Poltorak via fotocommunity

He’s happy. He’s at peace. Not in the least bit cynical. He still believes in the beauty of marriage, and would love to get married again one day.

His story could have been tragic. Instead, Ben approaches life from another angle.

He views everything that’s happened to him as just that – things that happened. These aren’t defining points in his life. They’re just bumps along the way.

He’s decided to make his life story an inspirational one.

We’re all main characters in the stories of our lives, protagonists in our own books.

There are numerous genres out there – adventure, horror, chick-lit – and we get to choose which genre we live in.

Some people have a good life, but they’re cynical; they’re constantly suspicious of everything and everyone around them. They live in a pretty depressing story – the kind you put down and feel worse after than you’d felt before.

Other people have hard times but you’d never know it by looking at them. Because they made a choice. And they chose to be happy. And they live in an inspirational story.

So good things happen. Bad things happen. Welcome to life.

Now you have a decision to make: how do you want to live your life? What genre would your like you life to be?

You can make it happen.

 

This isn’t the first time I’ve written on the subject – in fact, I wrote a blog post featuring a literary version of this idea. Check it out here.

What’s your opinion? Can people choose the genre they live in?