Friday 21 December 2012

Everything is as it should be

One of the movies that stick with me is Sliding Doors. I don't think I have ever watched it from beginning to end, but my sister told me about the story line in great detail and that story stuck with me ever since. (If you have not watched the movie and/or don't know the storyline, you gotta read the link first.)

Fate. 

These days, I am somewhat intimate with the idea of "everything is as it should be". I realise that this can be so offensive to a lot of people who outright do not believe in fate or destiny or whatever else you may call it. Yet the idea that no matter the steps that you take, sometimes they lead you back to one person, one destination, one path. It is like you get to take a detour for a while before you go back to where you are meant to be. A lot of roads lead to Rome. You get to choose the route, but there are mini-destinations along the way that you are bound to encounter no matter which road it is you choose. 

The more I think about this, the more I realise that it is so crazy. In this life, unlike the movie, we do not have the benefit of parallel universe. We do not know what our lives would be had we miss the train, for example, or not pick up that call, or, something that is very relevant to me, had I not eat that something that makes me sick. As such, we have nothing concrete to compare against. We can only speculate that our lives today are better than the alternatives. I mean, I think my life is better today, and this is purely my perception. I can't quite provide concrete proof via comparison because, oh well, there is no comparison.

I mean it is like discovering that you are not fit for each other in a relationship - it is better to find out before you got married because divorce is messy. Of course it is even better if you manage to choose the path that bypasses the relationship altogether (since you end up not together anyway) because that means you bypass the heartache, and get to think of that person as the one who got away (rather than the one who broke your heart). This is of course somewhat radical, because we all like to think that we can overcome all obstacles that come our way so that our dream to be with this one person we love so dearly can come true. But what if some dreams are not a meant to be? What if you are not meant to be together, despite your desires to be together? What if destiny has a different course for you? How do we know that it is time to dream about other dreams? How do we know it is a time to let go? How do we let go of something that we can't? How do we know where to go and what to do, or if we are in the right path?

Maybe, just maybe, having all of these uncertainties is a part of the deal - that we are meant to struggle with this. Everything is as it should be. 

I had a rather interesting conversation over lunch about relationships - and the view that was presented to me was that if we know that we want to be together and have children, then why do we have to spend time doing it after particular time frames.We may as well fast forward it since we know that that is the destination that we are going to. I am very familiar with this view because this is my Dad's view on life. He has always been someone who is so assertive and so sure of his life that it is almost inconceivable to me that he once had doubts (logic tells me that every human being in this planet experiences doubt once in a while, and that includes my Dad, but I have never seen it nor heard about it ever). Some people are just so confident in the path that they are in that they surge forward knowing for sure that this is it. This is where I am meant to be. This is where I am supposed to be and I am going to be there no matter what. And they get there. The existence of people like this who have not heard of The Secret is the affirmation that The Secret does work.

Compared to people like the above, I am so indecisive, so absent-minded, so unassertive. I am lacking destination, I am lacking drive and I am consumed with inability to decide where I want to go and where I'd like to be. As much as I am a planner and planned my day somewhat rather meticulously, I realise that I am no where a planner as much as these people are. These are the ones who put the meaning to the word planning and they don't use their calendars very often, except to say that by this time next year, I would be in this position. And to these people, the phrase everything is as it should be sounds like some lame excuse that people like me say in order to make me feel better about my life (what they really want to say, I bet, is something along the lines of my perceived lack of achievements in life, but of course they are too nice to say that out loud so it sort of becomes this common, ordinary line from polite people who are too concerned about being polite with each other).

Nonetheless, I am still of view that everything is as it should be, and yes, we can be the masters of our own destinies, and there are lessons that we have to learn in this life. We can fast forward it if we work hard in it, and there is nothing wrong with slowing down and enjoying the ride, while learning the same lessons eventually. Life is as good as you make it and everything is as it should be. 

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