Opportunity Dances with Character to Create a Destiny

Most people believe in fate and most spiritual faith traditions contain an element of its mystery in its teachings. We like to believe that we direct our destiny and this belief stands most of the time until something weird happens. Good or bad. We all have astounding stories re fate. I have accumulated hundreds over the years as you can imagine, enough that I don’t doubt that there is a destiny for all of us. Understanding and describing its mechanisms is complicated, however but I want to try.

Some say that our destiny is obvious, just look around! You’re living it. But I don’t think it’s that easily dismissed. I do believe that there are things like opportunity (or lack of it) that impacts on whether our destiny gets unfolded in the manner it was meant to. For example, a person is destined to be a healer/doctor but they’re born into circumstances that are poor with resources, support or peaceful.

Question: What does it mean when we say something was fated to be or that this was our destiny and who is sitting at the controls?

Loved or cursed. “Why do all these horrible things keep happening to me when I consistently choose the righteous path?”, we wail to anyone who will listen (yes I do hear this a lot). Something is not right in the world when we choose to be a good person and end up with the shorter end of the stick. It’s like a deal that went south. But then who were we making that deal with anyway?

Aside from good luck or bad, what makes us suspect something was fated to happen? Is it because there was such a small window of timing for it to take place? Is it because we dreamed of the event beforehand? Or perhaps because it feels like no matter what we do, the outcome is habitually positive or negative? If everything in our lives is fated to be why make any effort at all? There is nothing more astonishing than learning that someone won a lottery six times or someone has been attacked randomly six times? What did s/he do to warrant such a fate?

Timing is Everything

If it is my fate to meet you, then we shared a thread of matching fates which led us to this point of joining. Fate therefore is comprised of many threads and if any of those single threads were to shift then our joined fate would be altered. We’ve all met someone special and felt that the timing was off. One of us was on our way out of town, or just gotten married, or on our death bed. Of course, that was our fate but that won’t stop us from moaning, “Why now?”

Being at the right place at the right time is everything. Can that be arranged? We would like to think so. Fate drives us to reach more deeply into our emotional core where fear and desire rage. If only we had done such and such or known then what I know now.

There is a dearth of books on the market with silly promises that if you do the right thing; visioning a beautiful and abundant future for example, it will manifest. The problem has always been, what to say when that just isn’t the case? Because the reality is that terrible things do happen to lovely people. And wonderful things do happen to the nastiest people!

A Lesson in Control

Perhaps the true essence of fate is its lesson in control. Our ancestors would sagely nod and say, “You’ve angered and/or pleased the Gods and you’ll be dealt with accordingly.” Our ancestors however, always regarded the Gods and Goddesses as unpredictable and random in their reward/ consequence justice. You couldn’t always trust that their meted justice was fair in any way a human could grasp. There was a time when the divine was believed to be not always good, wise, all loving or all seeing; it was as prone to jealousies, petty bickering, violence, vengeance and moodiness as humans. This however, helped humans explain natural disasters, and personal, inexplicable unfairness. The divine could strike a mighty blow and rain hell on our heads for no apparent reason and humans were left with limited options. That was our fate.

When Lady Fortuna has taken control of our destiny wheel, it’s likely a lesson about adapting to capricious change. Sometimes I wonder if Lady Fortuna steps in like a chiropractic spiritual adjustment when we have been veered too drastically off our fated track. She may even take us off to the spirit world before we cause more damage to someone’s else’s fated destiny by living a life that’s not even our own.

Fate is rarely predictable or attached to good begetting good and bad begetting bad. I think that’s it’s most salient lesson. Don’t think you’ve done something particularly stellar or terrible, rather consider that our lives are at the will of the Gods and be at peace that you don’t have as much control as you fancy.