The ninth graders I worked with were assigned a paper each year about Romeo and Juliet Was it fate or bad decisions that caused their untimely death? I had always assumed that it was bad choices, young marriage, dramatic suicides, impulsive behavior. I had never even considered the other side. They had no choice in being Montague or Capulet. It was not in their control that the messenger would be quarantined and Romeo would never know the plan of his Juliet.
We don't choose or are allowed to give our opinion on what family we are born into. Geographically and economically we are cemented into the arms of our kinfolk. Genetically, oh the curses of fate determines our height, hair, general intelligence and predisposition to many forms of addictions and medical maladies. I must rethink my fate/ choices theory and then it comes to me not unlike a sign from the good Lord himself.
We all have a choice in how we react to these angels or demons of fate. That we have knowledge however small gives us the simple odds of the gambler. Do we drink if our father is a raging alcoholic? Do we eat mass quantities of salt and cake when heart disease hangs from the family tree. Do we ignore the crazies in our head when we have had crazies in our house. So I return to the question of fate and choice and they are symbiotic, not existing without the other. Was it fate you met your spouse or your choice to pick up that Mocha latte? Is there a grand plan for our lives, or is it all mixed up in DNA and half thought out decisions? Doesn't matter much on how you get there. It's what you do once you get out of the car.
2 comments:
I love this post, let me reiterate. There are oh so many things that we, however hard we fight, just can't choose. The idea of fate is mystifying and I was in fact talking to Christian about predestination, yesterday. It is interesting how it was on all of our minds. He brought up the idea that the present does not exist and all that is happening is actually in the past. Thus, we are essentially already dead, so perhaps our lives are predetermined.
predestination sometimes is the only thing that makes sense
Post a Comment