fated

The ancients believed in fate because they recognized how hard it is for anyone to change anything.  The pull of past and future is so strong that the present is crushed by it.

 -excerpted from Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles, Jeanette Winterson

i've never been one that believes in 'fate', as it were.  instead i believe in the power of manifesting.  the power of now.  the power of the individual to tap into a greater consciousness, call it what you wish, and change the course of their life.  but when i ran across this passage by one of my favorite authors, i had to pause and consider it.  

i relate strongly to the last clause...'the present is crushed by it'.   i know that feeling.. the feeling that no matter what effort i deploy, no matter how staunchly resistant or willfully headstrong, the course is set and some things are simply inevitable.  and yet, how can that be? 

growing up in a christian church i often struggled with this same paradox by a different name.  predestination versus free will.. and it was one of those conundrums that could tie my brain in knots, such as 'how do you get from 1 to 2 when there are infinite numbers between them?'  

argh.  that one still sends me into a spiral of mathematical torment.  

but i digress... back to the question at hand.  of fate.  of crushing inevitability.  and suddenly, just now, while i stare out my front window at the autumn sun and ponder this, i remember another passage i have transcribed in my book of quotes.  here, i'll share it.. 

But he was able to understand one thing:  making a decision was only the beginning of things.  When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision. 

-excerpted from The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho 

this 'current' coelho references.. this 'strong current'.. that is how i see fate.  it isn't there waiting for us, but rather an unexpected byproduct of the choices we make at every turn.  semantics perhaps.  but it's an explanation that i can abide by.  my skill at predicting those byproducts is woefully weak; but nevertheless, in hindsight i can usually identify when i stepped into the current that is currently sweeping me off my feet. 

d: to give in and float a'while

b: i have ideas!  so many ideas about which i want to write...

g: weak prediction skills.. for i fear i'd miss so much if i always knew where the current was taking me