The cynical optimist

Imagine this:

Three woman, sitting cross legged on the floor of a room that seems both of this world and not, the women themselves both ancient and ageless, with whispers of silver hair falling from their heads, their eyes cloudy from blindness. These women do not say a word, they simply wave their hands in front of them, slow methodical movements, the ebb and flow of time weaving through their fingers. Occassionally they pull at the timeflow, plucking it, twisting it, turning it, mastering it. These women are creating time, lifelines…Lifetimes! These are Fates. These are our masters, and our authors, they cannot be conned or tricked. The Fates must get what they want.

I just finished reading “Blackbirds” by Chuck Wendig and it has had me thinking a lot about fate. Whether or not it is an immovable force in our lives, a scripted end or if our fate is fluid that where we end up in life is based on the choices we make.

This book has had me questioning so many things, I don’t know if i believe in Fate or Destiny or any sort of predetermined aspect of our lives because that takes away from the magnitude of choices, if we chose to do something detrimental to ourselves and we end up either not hurting for that choice or even hurting temporarily but still becoming a brilliantly published author, or teacher, or whatever your dream may be doesn’t that choice become moot? Are we all barreling towards our own fates, regardless of what we do, who we meet, who we are and what we say, life has us set on a path.

If this set of thinking were to be true does that mean people are born destined to do terrible things? Or do circumstances change what we can become? Is there a few set outcomes to our lives where our choices influence where and how we end up? Are we puppets, are we not the masters of where we go?

The hell if I know

Some questions are meant to remain unanswered, but we can choose to believe in any set of answers we want. For me, I like to believe that our choices matter, that people are not born destined to do bad things…that if we make a bad choice here and there we can get back on the right track, that we can become better than what we are now. But hell, maybe it is my fate to believe that, maybe it’s my destiny to not believe in fate…and that by typing this whole thing out I am giving fate what it wants…
But I guess that’s up to the fates to decide…