“Hey what’s with the dice?”
I pointed to the small silver dice pendant that hung around my teacher’s neck.
Don* was fresh out of university, and we’d struck up a friendship of sorts, based on our love of experiencing new things. He’d always wanted to learn to how to ride a motorbike, and I told him I’d happily oblige if he let me drive his hotted up car.

But on this day, it was the die that caught my eye. I was only about 14, but I knew there was more to this symbol than a simple pendant. What followed was an intriguing conversation about the role of fate in our lives. A typical conversation for two rebels just trying to figure out this ‘life’ thing.
He explained he was ‘living by the die’, making decisions based on its roll. He’d changed degrees, ditched a fiancée, and moved houses, purely based on the roll of a die.
There was no internet back then, so I had to take his word for it that he wasn’t the only crazy person doing this. Well, crazy is a misnomer. One man’s crazy is another man’s genius.
There was a simplicity in this method of life for sure; if one believed in fated lives and no agency. But I was still learning, and I didn’t know what I believed.

I’ve no idea what brought his dice to mind many years later, but I jumped online to find out about this ‘die thing’ he’d spoken about. I found an article about the book The Dice Man.
Don hadn’t mentioned the actual book, but it makes sense that a ‘trend’ like this would have its origins in literature, and it made for fascinating reading!

Ha! Ha!
Of course, my next step was to Facebook stalk him to see how his life turned out. The romantic in me was disappointed to find he’s working in the corporate sector, making a ‘killing’ in traditional marketing and seminars.
But no one can know facts from this distance, right?
Perhaps the die led him there?
My heart gently reminded me that whether he ‘sold out’ or ‘grew up’ is entirely based on my own perspective, and not his.

Thinking back to Don’s ‘system of life’ made me ponder my own.
It certainly seemed ludicrous to hand your life over to the roll of a die that knew nothing about you personally, your dreams, hopes or ambitions.
Yet I’d spent my early years doing what was expected of me.
And it was the same as rolling a die for decisions.
The people who ‘expected’ me to behave a certain way knew nothing about me personally. They knew nothing of my dreams, hopes, and ambitions. I just did what was expected, and I excelled at it. Everyone else seemed to decide what the roll of my die should be.
And I gladly obliged.

People pleasing, or the fawn response of complex PTSD, slowly erodes the self, autonomy, and any form of agency with each inauthentic step.
It’s a survival mode of behaviour based on what appears the safest route through any particular day.

I wasn’t blatantly rolling a die like Don, but I was just as passive. I let others (people, society, and systems) roll my die for me. And as they say, you can’t change something you’re not aware of!
But this awareness also comes with a form of contradiction.
I certainly believe in the power of a surrendered life.
But there’s a dramatic difference between surrendering to the familiarity of unhealthy patterns in our lives, and surrendering by choosing to flow with life, rather than resist and battle against your one and precious life.

*Name changed

(This post has been adapted from my Readers Circle Newsletter.)
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