There is, and has been in the past, a widespread belief among humanity in the concept of destiny, fate, the preordination of an individual's life; a life predestined by some superior being or force, a life's journey,already mapped out, which only the most powerful can possibly alter. Astrology is, perhaps nowadays, the belief that most easily comes to mind; that your life is somehow determined by the position, relative to the earth, of the stars and the planets in the universe at the very instant of your birth. Less well known, but surely cut from the same primeval cloth (if I may be permitted a very bad pun) are Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, the three Moirai, or Fates, of Greek mythology and the three Norns of Norse mythology (the Wyrd/Weird* Sisters), Urðr** (also known as Wyrd),Verðandi and Skuld, who all six share the same profession; spinning the threads of each life into an intricate and unbreakable web or tapestry of existence. This dual triad of 'relatives' may ultimately stretch back in time to the three faces of the 'moon goddess', maiden (new moon), matron (full moon) and the crone (old moon); more shades of the astrologer's deep roots in our past. And there you were, thinking that the three witches of Shakespeare's 'Macbeth' were merely a dramatic, and not very convincing, artistic artifice.
Of course, no-one, whether you follow Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Humanism or Atheism, believes in such mythical and mystical beings or their philosophies; the 'fate' of all gods or spirits destined forever to finally outlive their own practical usefulness. Humans have free will and, believing such, are masters of their own destiny. Our fate lies within our own hands; we make choices and the outcome of those choices is the life that we lead. From the gross down to the smallest minutiae, our future, and ultimately our past, is determined by the decisions we make, or made, no matter how small or how large. To paraphrase Han Solo: "There's no mystical, all pervading energy field controlling my destiny!"*** And yet, the idea continues to be attractive and alluring. For the believers, it provides comfort and some kind of intangible evidence for the existence of their own brand of deity; for the rest of us, it provides a mechanism of dissolving the blame, if blame is to be assigned, for our lives; that all too human desire to affirm that "it wasn't my fault, guv".
We humans have a serial distaste for chance, happenstance, coincidence, although why this should be is clouded in mystery; after all, there seems to me to be little wrong with the occasional bout of chaos now and then. Perhaps, in possessing a semblance of control over how we react to situations or events, we feel a very real need to believe that we control those same events in a similar manner. This is obviously poppycock of the first order; we are no more in control of the things which happen TO us than a fly on the wall understands the mathematics of Set Theory, but still we behave as though it might be true.
I was reminded of this as I attempted to explain to another the significance, if any, of supposed coincidences, widely separated in time, between one event and another. Why the 'Faerie Queen' was related to 'Arntie Joan' and why they then should have mental connections to the 'Amerlo'. What links these things in my mind; what made the chain, divorcing all other links which might also have contributed; why do these things have a significance, above all else, and the reasons why I might see this trio and not others, which must, surely, be as significant?
The unlooked for, yet nonetheless passionate and abadonned, embrace and subsequent kiss beneath the bridge; the misdirected email, a cri de coeur, and my subsequent 'frisky', and alcohol-fuelled reply; the innocent redirection to a blog-post for no other reason than a fascination with the names that people are known by; why should these synapses fire when others do not? They are all as a result of chance; happenstance. I suppose that I could lay it firmly at the feet of the damaged and murdered brain cells; one more repercussion of the fateful day when I joined the legion of fans of St Barnabas of the Stroke. And yet I do not think that this is the case.
The other profound thing that these episodes bear in common is that they did not, or have not, ended badly, no matter how deeply I might have felt about the events, or the people. In my experience, things turn out badly in direct proportion to how much you care, how much or how little you allow emotion to overcome you. The 'nineteenth, immutable law of God' states that the more that you give away of yourself, the more likely that you are to experience pain!
Two thirds of the 'relationships' have been, and remain, and will ever remain, platonic, (cue Plato running away fron the city with a nubile female over his shoulder, as though she were are a Sabine woman****, who is screaming: "Plato, Plato, whatever happened to our relationship?"); the Faerie Queen should have been platonic; only my (and her?) inexperience (and lust, well at least on my part) caused it to be otherwise.
We humans have an instinctive, and quite natural, desire to hold something of ourselves in reserve. Wary of being duped, of falling foul of the manipulators in our social group, we retain a measure of detatchment from the events that surround us and, if truth be told, from the emotions which envelop us. Whilst the ultimate, possible gain is some measure of protection from upset and trauma, how little does this strategy protect us; to deny what we are diminishes us all, whether we like it or no.
And yet, for all of my rational desire to believe otherwise, I cannot help but think that these events, coming as they did at particular points in my life, times of trouble, times of emotional turmoil, have a significance beyond the chaos, the chance, the 'bona fortuna'; how else to explain the joy and satisfaction that they have given me and continue to give. It is sometimes difficult to avoid the conclusion that, in a place outside of our normal existence, in a place outside of our normal quotidien plane of being, someone watches over me with a kindly and benevolent eye and guides my future.
* 'Wyrd' or 'weird' which means 'fate' in Old Norse
** I hope you appreciate the lengths I went to in incorparating the Old Norse (and current Icelandic) 'eth' into the spelling! It has congnates to the Middle English letter 'thorn' which thorn replaced in the transition from Old English to Middle English; the 'ye' (for 'the') of 'Ye olde village Tea Shop'. It is usually pronounced as an 'unvoiced fricative'; 'th' as in 'them'.
*** One of the few pale glimmers of insight in Lucas' script; we are obviously meant to conclude the exact opposite.
**** It is, I think, one of the enduring elements promoting fascination about language, 'the rape of the Sabine women'; how the meaning of a quite relatively innocent word, 'rapere', meaning 'to carry off', should come to exclusively mean the forced sexual violation of women, albeit that this was probably the fate of all women so 'carried off'.
No comments:
Post a Comment