This time last year, things were very different. On the outside, it looked like I had everything made as I jet-set and planned for the next adventure. But we all know Facebook is fake and our lives aren’t all perfectly glistening in the sun and we all have shit to deal with. It’s a fact of life. I’m no different.

I was handed something to deal with out of the blue that made me change the direction of my life. But in the beginning, I fought it because I didn’t want to slow down, I didn’t want to change where I was going. So I pushed on. And kept going. Until life reminded me again what it did before, that we aren’t machines and sometimes we have to listen when the Universe is screaming at us. We think we know what’s most important. We think we have it made. We think we have things planned.

But we know sweet bloody nothing compared to what’s planned, we’re just alive and playing the game. And when you go as far as you go and the verdict is in that you still have to make a change, there’s nothing left better to do but accept it and do it.

If you’re a stubborn person like me, accepting to change from a desired path is a hard pill to swallow. Accepting maybe you don’t know all the answers to the big things in life is also hard. Only now do I realize I didn’t know everything when I was 18 and know way too little than I should, even yet. You might feel like your wings are clipped. You might feel like you failed. You might be really mad at how things are. I felt all these things.

But the longer you get used to the idea of change, you start seeing new places where you fit. The more open you are to change, the more open the outside world seems to become, welcoming you into a new part of it. New directions are frightening because you don’t know if you’ll be the same person on the other side. Or if you want to be.

Sometimes life hands us a shit sandwich and makes us eat it. It’s unpleasant and horrible. But in that moment of being served how human you are, it’s an opportunity to evolve. And you can take it or you can leave it. I’ve learned that life is about riding the waves and you can’t lock your knees when the water is choppy – you have to be flexible and bend, absorb the impact and roll with it. The rush is coming from the unknown and since no two waves are alike, it’s a rush none of us have felt before. This visualization helps me face change and adapt when I have no choice.

So yeah, Facebook is fake and life is not perfect but we all totally have the choice in how we deal with things when they come our way. There are a million ways to tackle it but sometimes the best approach is to make friends and work with it. It’s natural to want to fight it but your energy is best spent elsewhere, towards that real place of rainbows and glistening in the sun you want to get to, despite the detours life makes you take along the way. Good things come when we open up to the unexpected plans of the Universe. We’re only human, this stuff is bigger than us, work with it.