Generally August is a month I wish didn’t exist.
It’s the month when winter has already dragged on for too long and I am craving daylight and warmth and a reminder that spring will return. This year, with my newfound freedom to create my own schedule, I have tried to make it different. I’ve been out hiking with friends ( ✅ sunshine and fresh air). I’ve planted salad greens in the garden ( ✅ fresh food and more fresh air). The blog has given me an opportunity to consider some powerful concepts like passion and purpose (or ert). Synchronicity has played a part with quotes and memes and articles appearing everywhere in my reading and on my social feeds. Synchronicity or perhaps an algorithm – same same!!! It’s been a month of curiosity. August has regained some status in my calendar.
All month I have had one consistent companion. Sitting on my desk is a little card that I pick up and read nearly every day. The Desiderata took pride of place on my wall throughout my 20s and a copy has been in my wallet ever since. It’s never far from me and I can recite it almost word for word, sort of like a prayer now that I think about it. During the pandemic I went back to it for the first proper look in years and spent weeks working through each line of the prose and reflecting on what it meant to me.
In confronting situations I silently repeat go placidly… remember what peace there is in silence. Its partner statement that gave me strength to stand my ground – you have a right to be here.
I am overly distracted by the surprising number of years I seem to have already lived. I am grateful to have had them and hopeful for at least this many more so I am learning to take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. It is wise advice.
When life seemed unfair or illogical – no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Paulo Coelho makes this addition in The Alchemist. The universe IS unfolding as it should… and conspiring to help you reach your destiny. No matter what your belief system the concept is a reassuring one when all is going well and a source of comfort and hope when it’s not.
Purpose. Faith. Belief. Destiny.
Destiny is defined in my ancient dictionary as foreordained lot, fate. I struggle with this concept and have spent many hours trying to sort out my thoughts on it. This idea of destiny grates on me and I cannot align it with my conviction that we are here to live this life with the challenges we are born with and the resources available to us; so many factors playing into what seems to be a random quirk of nature. I think it’s the concept that a conscious decision has been made somehow about who we will be and what will be our ‘foreordained lot’ that I struggle to accept. It’s a curious one.
When I look back at life so far I see how time and time again I have trusted that ‘the next thing’ would appear and each time I’ve had a go. Where I lived. Whether I worked or not. The time and space to spend wondering if writing is passion or purpose! Destiny? No. Each decision, whether made consciously or not, was chance and choice and the good fortune to be in the place where opportunities were available to me and I had the resources to take them up.
Choice is such a privilege. When my baby was diagnosed with a chronic disease I argued about it with those who considered the concept as ‘meant to be’. “God knew that you are the right family to deal with this…” What sort of benevolent being would choose such a challenge for an innocent child? Surely it cannot be destiny for a child not yet two years old to have to face life with such a burden? No, I accept that the genetic make up of my child and the environment my baby was born into contributed to the inevitable outcome. The rational scientist comes out strongly in me! Mind you, my husband and I still dearly longed for ‘a being’ somewhere upon whom we could lay blame, rant and rave at, demand retribution from. Perhaps a religious framework would have stood us in good stead at that point. There is a far gentler comfort to be found there than in the cold facts of science.
I started this piece determined to stay away from the concept of faith versus science. I may not have a formal religious belief but I do benefit from the teachings of the Buddha, from the moral compass instilled in me at Sunday school as a child, from the ethical code articulated in the Lord’s Prayer and the power of community built on a shared system of belief. Wielded for good or for evil, it’s powerful and it’s the bedrock of society.
I keep coming back to the concept of destiny as the point at which my thoughts diverge. I cannot logically accept the existence of a divine presence with a prewritten plan. Which is strange when I think about my willingness to explain things to myself in a more mystical manner. I often write about the presence or absence of Flow. Flow has a capital letter as it is the name for a female energy I imagine visiting me and supporting my creativity. I speak sometimes to God. ‘Please, God, make it ok!” I consider myself to be spiritual, a humanist, but the greater power I acknowledge, Helen Garner’s mighty force, is nature herself.
Nature (the molecules from which I am made, the genetic code that preordains what I look like and the internal resources I have to draw upon, the environment in which I live) is the closest I get to acknowledging a magical presence with purpose and nature is not random. She is intentional, insistent, patient and unforgiving, demanding and responsive. I imagine Nature to be a feminine force as well. See, I do have beliefs that can’t be attributed to scientific knowledge. Nature is fertile, often called ‘the mother’, reproduces… hmm, I’m entering some philosophical territory here! What I can sit with is that there is no Western ‘wisdom’ to justify my absolute conviction of that as truth. It just is. Biophilia describes an innate and genetically determined affinity of human beings with the natural world (ref Google dictionary because it’s too recent for my old volume of words), captures this for me in one scientific sounding word. I love the concept of forest bathing that has recently been more popularly acknowledged in the Western world. Human beings have done this forever, this wandering in nature and communing with trees, craving air that is clean, dipping into the water, surrounding ourselves with greens and blues and browns. Gazing at the horizon. Gasping at the glory of a spectacular sunrise or sunset (and taking copious photos of them!!!!). Something in us knows that this is the closest we can get to the core of the meaning of life if there is one.
I think where I am coming to I acknowledge that this battle I have, this resistance to the concept of destiny, is not a case of cognitive dissonance but actually the confluence of fact and belief as two harmonious sides of one precious perspective on the world.
So back to the Desiderata and destiny.
The closest I can get right now to explaining how I see things is this.
1. My destiny when I was born was to live a life.
2. I have agency to live my life.
Perhaps this is a good place to end in the same way as the Desiderata, the best phrase in the entire piece. If we really do have a choice in the life we live then…
Strive To Be Happy.
*My dictionary is the Collins New English Dictionary published and printed in 1956. Words and meanings have evolved significantly since then but I do like seeing where some of our understanding comes from…
Fate and destiny versus choice and circumstance hmmmm. Is it possible to have a belief in all of the above?
I have faith and beliefs although not sponsored or affiliated with any particular religion as such. I am certainly built on traditional Christian values but enjoy learning other beliefs, values and thoughts to define meaning. For me, I have a sense there is something guiding my journey in life but I don’t have a name for it. I have often debated that you can have faith and spirituality without a “name”. Do we really need a label? And why? I also believe that there is a meaning and lesson gifted to you in everything that happens, good and bad. Sometimes the lesson is obvious and sometime it can take years to unpack and understand how the lesson made you stronger, wiser or just broadened your understanding of the role and your place in the world.
Nature (and it’s creatures) to me is divine. It transcends what I can conceive and has no limits to it awesomeness. It regularly takes my breath away in a way that I can hardly articulate. It reminds me how “small” I am. It reminds me how infinite natures magic really is. Despite our so called ‘human intelligence’ and ability to control and master many circumstances, Mother Nature reminds us of her delicate balance and her equally destructive force that really controls humankind.
All I can be certain of is I am here to appreciate and respect this world and the people who live within it.
I love your summary statement! Appreciation and respect – what beautiful tenets to live by.
I agree with you about that sense of guidance and I too lean towards nature as the source of that divinity. Thank you for putting such considered thoughts into words like these.