“Life is not easy for any of us.  But what of that?  We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves.  We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.”

— Marie Curie

As I sit down to write on another Monday morning, with the weekend behind me and the promise of a new week gleaming on the horizon, I think of all the messages I will read today about Monday morning — how it is a letdown after weekend fun, how it is hard to get out of bed, how people dread their return to the work week.  Life is work.  There is no way around it; and in spite of whatever fantasies we might have about the greener grass on our neighbor’s side of the fence, we all have responsibilities.  Even the person whose life work is also his soul’s mission must deliver effort that sometimes seems distasteful and irrelevant and, quite simply, a waste of time.  Maybe those are the thoughts that create our negative view of Monday mornings — the thoughts that we will spend at least part of our time doing things we would rather not do, so that we can attain our goals or realize our purpose.

How can we know when we are living the life we are destined to live?  How can we know, when we pursue the less-than-exciting tasks that come our way, that we are doing them to clear the way to fulfilling our purpose for being alive?  As I  have cleared my garden of the skeletal remains of tomato vines and pepper plants, making way for the decay of winter to prepare the soil for Spring planting, I find myself at one of those moments.  Taken out of context, pulling brittle vines with half-rotten tomatoes is a distasteful job.  It is probably my least favorite part of tending a garden; but without it, the parts I love more dearly might never come to be.  It is the combination of perseverance and confidence that allows us to rise above our momentary desire to give up the pursuit of a dream that seems always to move beyond our reach.  We must know our own giftedness and trust that when we persevere, we will not only attain our goals, but continue to move toward our purpose for being alive.

When roadblocks, or Monday mornings, fall in our path, we have two choices.  We can sit down, stop walking and blame it on Fate that we are unable to keep moving toward our goals, or we can be confident in our giftedness and our ability to solve the dilemma, and consider it our destiny to overcome whatever stands between us and our soul’s purpose.  Fate and Destiny may sound like the same thing, but they are very different.  Accepting our fate is a statement of defeat.  Embracing our destiny empowers us.  When our soul and our mind and our energy all engage in pursuing what we were born to do, there is no obstacle great enough to deter us.

It is Monday morning.  A whole new week begins to light the horizon.  There will be roadblocks and there will be triumphs; and we must trust our own gifts to be adequate to overcome whatever stands in our way.  We must not succumb to the defeat of Fate; rather, we must trust the path that leads to our Destiny.