The things that happen to us are not always of our making

The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith. Page 99.

She walked home slowly. It was a warm evening for the time of year, an evening that had in it just the smallest hint of summer, and there were others making their way home too. Most of them had people to go to, husbands, wives, lovers, parents. Her house awaited her, large and empty, which she knew was the result of choices she had made, but which perhaps were not entirely to be laid at her door. She had not deliberately chosen to fall in love so completely, and so finally, that thereafter no other man would have done. That was something which had happened to her, and the things that happen to us are not always of our making. John Liamor happened, and that meant that she lived with a sentence. She did not ponder it unduly, nor speak to others of it (although she had spoken to Jamie, unwisely perhaps, the previous evening). It was just how things were, and she made the most of it, which was the moral duty which she thought that all of us had, at least if one believed in duties to self, which she did. If x, then y. But y?