To Be or Not To Be

A little kingdom I possess,
Where thoughts and feelings dwell;
And very hard the task I find
Of governing it well.
~ Louisa May Alcott

...that more or less describes my situation!

~A Wise Man Said~

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
~ Aristotle
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
 
Our choices are our destiny

Have you heard the story of the drowning man and God? Here is the gist: A man caught up in a terrible storm climbs to the rooftop of his house. He fervently prays to God to save him. A rowboat comes along and asks the man to hop on. The man responds saying that he won’t because he is expecting God to save him. He keeps praying. A motorboat passes his way and offers to help him. Again the same response that God will help him. After some more time has passed, a helicopter hovers over his head and motions to him frantically. Our man again responds that he’d rather wait for God to take him to safety. The storm builds up at this point and the man drowns. On reaching heaven he asks God why he did not save him in spite of his faith. God tells him that he tried to save him thrice—he sent two boats and a helicopter!

Now, this story, simple as it sounds seems pretty profound to me. It calls into question the idea of destiny (if we think of God’s plan as destiny) and whether that destiny fulfils itself no matter what we do or whether we are supposed to meet it halfway. I think which side of the fence one is on makes a significant difference to how one lives one’s life. The former idea would mean that no matter what one does, one will be led to one’s destiny. Even if you don’t do anything, things will come to you if they are meant to. The latter idea makes one feel responsible for steering one’s life towards what it is destined for…you know that there is something that is meant for you, but you will have to work your way towards it or make the right decisions that take you there. You feel the weight of the responsibility and you have to do the work…in a sense destiny appears to be a reward for your determination and perseverance in search of it. It is not that there is no destiny in this scheme of things but you need to be able to create an opportunity for it to do its bit or be attuned to the various ways in which opportunities might present themselves.

The thing is that in real life all this is a lot more complicated than it seems. Unlike the man in the story, we do not have straightforward goals like being saved in a storm (sometimes we don’t even know what our goals are) and we do not usually have straightforward paths presented to us like the three people who came along to rescue the man (there are innumerable paths). And when you add not having clear goals or not being able to prioritise goals to not having clear cut paths before us, life can seem like a chaotic maze of decisions and responsibilities where the option of simply letting things happen as they will seems like an easier if not a less stressful option. At the most destiny meets us along the way, and at the worst it doesn’t and we console ourselves with the heartening notion that if it is to be, it will be—there’s nothing we can do. There is a beautiful song in Hindi which captures this sentiment, “Waqt se pehle, kismat se jyaada… Kisiko milahai, na kisi ko milega” (Before one’s time, more than destiny…no one has ever received, no one ever will).

Clearly, if nothing is gained by striving, and if one will surely get only what is destined for one, why strive at all? Why not live contentedly or grudgingly as the case may be with whatever one has or whatever one is? Why desire for more, why make goals, why be ambitious, why formulate projects, why work hard at them…? You see where this line of thinking can lead? To me it seems to lead in the opposite direction of destiny… which is mediocrity.

In my view, only those who have the courage to find their destiny…or work through the maze of goals and choices and obstacles and disappointments…ultimately meet it. Destiny might be waiting for everyone… but it fulfils its promise only for those who are tuned into or create opportunities for it to manifest and those who work hard to make best use of those opportunities when they do manifest. Even if destiny doesn’t fulfil itself in the end (as it would be naïve to think that every honest effort will meet with success), this attitude itself I would argue makes a life worth living… because it is lived on its own terms …consciously and responsibly. As they say, if we can’t win, we must at least die fighting. Therein lies our reward, even if a cruel one.




posted by Sylvia D'souza at 6:29 pm 2 comments
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