Luck. Fate. Or something

I knew she was going to say it. The same way you know the squalling fuchsia-clad toddler next to you on the beach when you’re trying to read your book is going to drop her ice cream in the sand. The same way you know the cute-looking West Highland Terrier in the park is going to morph into a whirling dervish the moment he claps his eyeballs on your dog. The same way that you just know your mum is thinking I told you so, even if she doesn’t actually say it out loud.

I clench my brain in anticipation.
“What will be, will be”.
There’s she’s said it now. Unclench. Relax. Oh no, hold on, she’s going for a repeater with a side order of meaningful straight-mouthed slow nodding.
“What will be, will be”.
Ok, coast clear? Phew. Stop screwing up your face and think of your wrinkles. Calm. Look out of the window and pretend to be studying the birds. Distract her quickly, before she goes for the hat-trick.
“Is that an owl over there?”
“Where? In the tree?”
She shoots, she scores.
Done. I think that’s today’s quota. Phew again.

To be fair – for like the road to hell, it is always kindly meant - it’s not so much the mode of delivery but the message. Fate. The idea that what happens to us is pre-ordained, that the paths of our lives follow a determined stone-carved invisible route on an invisible map that we don’t possess and never even get to peep over somebody else’s shoulder at.

The difficulty with a concept like fate is that’s it’s also impossible to disprove. Event A has happened so I take action B as a result. I think I’m determining my own outcome by choosing B, when in fact the B-road was what was pre-selected for me all along. I just didn’t know it. But what if I’d chosen C? Well, then that would mean that C was what I was always going to do… And so on and so on and into a spiralling pit of swirling existential angst in which you can never really actually choose anything at all with your free-will because it’s already been set out for you and packed up in your metaphysical lunch box along with your day’s supply of slightly stale ham and tomato sandwiches wrapped in foil.

All of which is a bit irritating because we like to think that we’re the ones in charge. So maybe my problem with this expression of the concept of fate is actually more a problem with my big ego not wanting to be told what to do and where to go by an invisible map? Maybe. Or maybe the issue is I think that we do determine our own luck to some extent, at least over many areas of our lives if not all of them. The old psychological battleground of nature versus nurture tells us, surprise surprise, that both have an influence on shaping us in a myriad of ways. Not nature. Not nurture. But both of them, working together. It would be illogical, given that premise, that we cannot but help to shape our own destiny – even if we do not control every element of it entirely. Surely sitting back and doing nothing only ensures that nothing happens?

Or maybe what will be, will be – but only if we help to make it so. Blame reading George Orwell at too tender an age.



An aside: I visited the grave of George Orwell two or three years back. He’s buried in Sutton Courtenay in Oxfordshire. It’s a pretty enough if unremarkable village with a couple of pubs to lure weary walkers away from their route along the Thames path and into the inns for a restorative pint of ale and a cheese sandwich. The grave is a small plain stone carved with his given names - Eric Arthur Blair – and his dates of arrival upon and departure from the human shuffle board: born June 25th 1903; died January 21st 1950.