A Matter Of Fate

The word "fate" means "what is certain;" it can also be called "a negative happening." You must choose what it means to you. It is our fate (what is certain) to meet many people in our lives. Some we know fleetingly, others for the duration. The matter of who we meet is less important than how we choose to deal with them. I suppose it is a matter of fate that I write this article. Here I am writing it, so what else can I say? Perhaps fate is a process, a continuum, a dimension of reality.

Fate has a beginning; I sit down and write this. Fate has a middle; people read it. Fate has an outcome; reading it adds to the reader's awareness, just as writing it adds to mine. Here we have fate in action. As one fateful action roils to a stop, another fateful action emerges from the womb of the one ceasing motion.

I believe it is everyone's fate to be happy, loved, secure and safe. I also believe that arriving at this way of life involves solving any number of problems. In other words, "what is certain" is that everyone has an equal opportunity for love, security and safety.

Sometimes, I imagine how things could have been different - this way, that way, the other way. If only I had said this, if only I'd done that. Yet this isn't what happened. What did happen is what I need look at, and utilize as the basis for my reality. What happened is my fate. "What is certain" is that people, places and circumstances arrive in our lives, and they arrive seemingly unbidden. What we forget is that we have complete choice over what we say, do and think about it all. Thus, fate becomes flexible. Karma becomes a process.

"What is certain" is that such-and-such will arrive in your life. And "what is certain" is that you'll make your choices about it, and life will unfold accordingly for you from then on. As individuals, we have tremendous power at our disposal. More power than any atom bomb or whatever madness mankind can dream up.

Look at the power some individuals have wielded in their minds and so helped change the world - folks such as Ghandi, Attila, Peter the Great. They created an attitude. Even Buddha sat under a bodhi tree and refused to move until spirit revealed its secrets to him.

While none of us are Buddha or the other great thinkers, we have the same power to create attitude. How you choose to deal with "what is certain" depends entirely on your attitude. If you root your attitudes firmly in the soil of heart, then "what is certain" is that you will eventually have peace on your path with heart.

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