On Destiny and Abundance
Is everything in life predestined?
On Destiny
Is everything in life predestined?
While thinking life is preordained, when nuanced, can help us process unsavory life experiences or adorn more mythical significance to the good times, it can be a sneaky way to absolve us of the responsibility for our lives when to live well,
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you're the easiest person to fool,” Richard Feynman said.
Those who know they can descend to hell at the same speed they could rise toward heaven sometimes experience Soren Kierkegaard’s 'vertigo’ at the realization of their freedom and the tremendous responsibility to think of what they want to do with their life, the lifestyle or goal they want, the pretty and prickly steps to guide their actions and the creeping worry of if a trade-off is worth it or merely a delusory fit with terrible consequences down the line.
To the question, "Why am I here?" haunting the man whose consciousness awakens to the concept of free will, Albert Camus would say there’s but
"one truly serious philosophical problem...suicide,"
because life is absurd as there’s no grand goal to why, for example, we’re smart. We could always get hit by a bicycle and die the same day we graduate from medical school just so the gods can have a good laugh.
Devoid of a helping hand from above, you attach whatever meaning you want to your life — you create your glorious quest through strategic judgment and voluntary actions and accept the costs coming with it.
You do whatever you want.
You could dedicate your life to work and love.
You could become an aesthetic dentist.
You could create the world’s most sentimental perfume.
That’s how Titans are made.
It’s how Alexander the Great conquered the world in such a short period. Even Julius Caesar wept in awe at the Macedonian King’s statue upon contemplating what he had conquered at his age.
You’ll be playing a different game when you start believing you have a great destiny and actually walk and interact with reality as its imperator.
Marcus Aurelius would even nudge you on, saying that,
We carry our fate with us and it carries us.
Assigning yourself a great destiny requires contemplating beauty because it’s the highest ideal. Beauty in excellence of mind, craft, combat, art, technology, spirit, energy, sports — is all around you. You can emulate it. Burn like the phoenix pursuing it and rise from the ashes refined.
You're agentic — meaning there’s a way your environment, genetics, and age made you out to be, as destiny would have it, but through good choices, you can wiggle out of the rigid box and create an alternate reality. One that’s malleable enough to escape entropy.
See, coincidences are cool. But what's cooler is knowing our perceptions and actions also play a part in adding some hue to the canvas of reality and we can increase the rate and circumference with which they do to create a beautiful full picture.
Character is fate.