Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and stare at the ceiling, suddenly feeling a bit dazed: am I where I am now because of choices I made step by step, or have I been pushed here by some invisible hand?

As a child, I swore I'd never speak like my parents. But now, whenever I get anxious, the tone of my voice and the way I furrow my brow are exactly the same as theirs. Genes—sometimes they’re even stronger than fate, like code written in your bones that can’t be changed.

At twenty, I thought life was full of endless possibilities, all about making choices. Looking back now, my character and circumstances at the time probably paved the way long before—I might never have really had a choice and could only walk down that one road.

We like to use words like “growth” or “epiphany” to explain the past, weaving scattered days into a reasonable story. Maybe it’s just to make ourselves feel better, because we don’t want to admit we might just be spinning tops driven by the inertia of life.

The script was probably written long ago, more or less. But when the alarm rings tomorrow morning, I’ll still have to get up and perform the day—if only for that fleeting sense of control.