Quirks of Fate

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Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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The notions of fate and destiny have been around for a while. They are related to prophecy in some respects. They are a logical summation of the cause & effect of karma and/or dependent origination. Once a chain of events has been set in motion the ongoing trajectory is inevitable. It becomes fated. Scientists even use the terminology of fate. They copy much poetic.

Many humans do not like to accept that aspects of their lives are pre-ordained. Some can use it as a chat up line, “hey babe we are soul mates and fate brought us together…”

Yet for many of us there are occasions when fate seems to play a hand. Something entirely unlikely can radically change our lives. We might call this an intervention of intuition, synchronicity or fate. We somehow just so happened to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. The odds against are large.

We could have missed our flight and that plane crashed. We could have swapped tickets with another just to meet the grim reaper on a Boeing 737. Fate it could be discussed is prone to exhibit quirks.

In the strict logic of fate it is impossible to forfeit a fate. Because if it was fated it will happen whether you like it or not. One path apparently open to you may not be taken. You have by fate forfeited that path. You were always fated so to do. So that path was not fated for you. No forfeit of fate, a different path was/is followed, according to fate.

Using the logic of fate. I was perhaps for countless lifetimes always fated to find myself here this afternoon, typing on this keyboard. I had no choice. It was preordained. I was for a while an academic but fate took me away from that path. Retrospect suggests that I was not in any case temperamentally equipped to work in and thrive in such an environment. It was fated that I became a loner-yogi-eccentric-pikey. So here I am.

I don’t know what fate has left for me “on the cards” so to speak. Fate will do the Tarot draw and maybe it has some quirks in store yet. I can’t know before hand, nor am I overly fussed. There is no need to be, because whatever happens it is fated, I cannot get out of it or escape it, it will happen whether I whinge and complain or not. I do not need to tempt fate by walking in the woods wearing camouflage during hunting season. Nor should I lock myself quivering indoors.

Likewise if you are fated to meet me, we will, whether you like it or not. I am probably more likely to be well prepared than you are. If we miss like ships passing in the night, then  no meeting was “on the cards” a feather touch of possibility unmanifest in the web of life is all that is fated and therefore warranted. A passing that may not come again this lifetime or for that mater ever. This butterfly wing interaction may nevertheless be a tiny breath of air to direct you along your fated path.

Trying to run and squirm out of fate is a mug’s game. Sooner of later fate wins, it holds all the cards.

Fate is perhaps more omniscient and omnipresent than humans are willing to accept. It was always fated thus.

Fate and Façade

A while back I wrote and entire blog around the notion of façade. It was called “Spiegelfassade”. The idea being is that people portray a façade, a persona, an ersatz, to others and then hide behind that. Rarely are human beings WYSWYG. They live in manner inconsistent with their authentic essence, life is a show-and-tell affair and they are not true. The public-relations-faux-façade is more present and giga-pixel ready these days. Insta-ready is not reality. One could make up a whole new identity with the help of AI and photoshop. This having a cover story is not new, it has been around for ever. There is tacit acceptance that some will need a cover in order to ply their trade. Others can take a face from the ancient gallery in a sociopathic manner. Others are knobheads.

The trouble with cover stories is that people can struggle to know what is cover, what is real. There were cases in the UK of undercover cops fathering children whilst in deep cover. Who knows how wide the psychological damage from that propagated? I doubt national security warranted such cynical imposition.

Last night as I was drifting off to sleep, I kept “getting” the number 37. Today I learned that 37 is a prime number, which I kind of knew anyway by sight. Apparently, that makes it useful for cryptography. If you ask human beings to pick a number at random between 1 and 100 it is the second most popular number after 7. Human random number generators are skewed. It is also a number used in a magician’s or mind reader’s force. They can, by prompting, guide you to this number. Ta-dah…magic!! 73 is also a prime number which makes 37 an unusual reversible prime. People choose numbers that are “lucky”. The odds for picking 37 are not 1 in 100. Humans have biases where they imagine there may be none.

The problem comes when façade interacts with façade and there is an illusion of reality on one or both sides. To an extent this is the basis of all 1:1 human interactions. We have a professional façade, a home one and perhaps are real only when we are alone. But if we have over egged the façade, it is impossible to understand or know our true authentic essence. People do not know themselves well and may deny a whole bunch of stuff. They may only know their shell, their façade, which they mistake for reality.

One of the answers in the University Challenge quiz last night was that “an unexamined life is not worth living”. People can quote philosophers in an erudite manner as a groovy tag to conversation. Rarely do they enact fully. Even those enamoured with the classics may quote more than do. We are selective. In this context fate is an interesting idea, that has on occasion a hackle tingling effect. We might like to believe it but only to an extent. We think we determine our life direction rationally, we choose. But a simple leaky condom can alter trajectory dramatically. We can be fated to meet someone who changes our life forever. We may miss a meeting that might be transformational by a hair’s breadth. We were not yet fated for that transformation; we came within a whisker.

If we live within the confines of our façade we may never know. If we are meant to find out, that façade might crack and perhaps violently so, revealing an unprotected nascent embryo beneath. It may evolve or develop another calcified shell quickly, lest the world sees an emperor unclad.

In all of us the authentic essence might leak through a crack. We might think, “what the fuck was that?” as we glue the porcelain mask quickly back together.

If like a Matryoshka doll there is façade after façade, identity after identity, it may take a long while to find that authentic essence. If we are fated to approach said essence then we will, no matter how much upheaval and struggle it entails. Layer after layer needs peeled back and like with onions we may cry along the way. If we are fated to stay in façade-land that is where we eke out our days.

Fate may engineer or come close, in one of these cases we will never know. Along the way we will have lent fate a hand by our choices, our decisions. It was fated thus.