Disclaimer: These are my religious views. You absolutely do not have to share them, and I don't expect you to.

People have their own vision of God, or who they might believe God to be. Whether that be a bearded man with a sword in hand, (as told by Bo Burnham) or a woman as majestic as Mother Nature herself. People may not even have a vision of God, and choose not to believe there is a God of any sort. Whatever your choice of religion might be, everybody does have an idea of how things happen in life, and why they might happen. To better understand where I'm coming from in this article, I'll tell you where this idea came from in the first place.

It was a lunch at Chick-Fil-A with my brother after a dress rehearsal for our most recent showing of "The Drowsy Chaperone." During this lunch, we were both discussing our apprehension of being in this musical, due to the fact that we weren't quite ready, and we opened the very next day. Due to the flow of the conversation we were having, we started discussing topics that just grew depth in terms of content. We both have the belief of everything in life happening for a reason. Whether we know that reason or not, that is for life to decide. Sometimes we see the reason grow in fruition, and other times, we may not ever see the reason unveil itself. Regardless of whether we get to see the consequences of our actions, they do occur.

My specific belief of everything happening for a reason correlates with my religious beliefs. I do believe God has His hand in our lives, but I don't necessarily believe He is the one behind the pilot seat. What I believe is God is holding a pen, and with this pen he narrates each individual life. However, I do not believe God is in control of the hand holding the pen. That would be our actions that moves the hand holding said pen. As we live our everyday lives, the pen is writing our narrative. We are in control of the story we write, and God is a spectator only writing what we create. I have always believed each person to be in control of his/her life, regardless of where you are born, moved to, or end up. If you don't like something about your life, you have the ability to change that quality or aspect. Each action occurring in our lives causes the pen to move, which continues our narrative that others can have the ability to know and learn about. This may sound similar to the idea of Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story from Hamilton. That song and the entire show's concept just so happened to reinforce this idea of life I have.

So, while you're going through your day today, make your narrative one worth reading. Make that narrative the best-seller of all time, because I mentioned that God is holding the pen, not the pencil. There's no erasing anything from your story, so make life worth every letter.