In our Age of Individuality, it is deeply unfashionable to speak of Destiny or Fate, uncool to question Free Will. But, I come from another tradition, where we learn early on to accept the vicissitudes of fortune—good and, especially, bad— without the additional burden of our doubt or resistance. Part of it is religious, yes, but the other part is cultural. For example, having experienced some great loss, a believer will simply point to their forehead and say: Maktoob ('it is written').
This reminds me of lines from a poem I greatly admired, as a teenager, The Rubaiyat, by the not-exactly-religious, Persian poet-mathematician-astronomer, Omar Khayyám (1048-1131)
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
―Omar Khayyám
And, because I believe Truth agrees with itself, decades later, I wholeheartedly embraced another philosopher's formulation from another tradition. The Stoic trick was maintaining a will (prohairesis) in harmony with the natural world—a sober self-control that yielded to fate.
The great philosopher of Late Stoicism, Seneca (4 BC-65 AD), illustrated this world-view with a powerful metaphor:
An animal, struggling against the noose, tightens it... there is no yoke so tight that it will not hurt the animal less if it pulls with it than if it fights against it. The best alleviation for overwhelming evils is to endure and bow to necessity.
Below, is my own brief meditation, in verse, on this vast, elusive subject.
Not by pushing
does one get ahead,
but by allowing
oneself to be pulled
by the constant
tug of all things.
Follow the invisible,
indivisible silken thread
drawing you forth.
We exercise our free will
by following our Destiny.
Think of existence
as a great love story—
every shy creature,
or mysterious truth,
wishes to be courted.
Proceed as the way opens,
the Quakers say.
©Yahia Lababidi
