FATE AND DESTINY

It was a small place near Indore this time and it was a friend of mine who was born with a gramophone in his throat. Anything that he spoke became a melodious song. We collected in hoards to listen to him sing. One afternoon we were having a chat and he was not singing for a change. He was speaking, words that were not a beautiful song. “In our entire life we keep chasing small things and then we quit one day, forever.” Human nature, I said. The day you and I can stop running after everything, we would have attained salvation. The topic died between us but not in my mind.
Indeed we do keep chasing small things in life, too many small objects, aims, goals and people. But would life be worth living if there were no goals to achieve, no places to reach, no people to love, no one to remember? What would life be if you could get up one morning and want to do nothing that day? Will there be any aspirations, any motivation, any drive amongst us? The world belongs to people who can shape their destiny and fate, twisting all odds, to those who make things happen, to those who can modify the very designs and shapes of their lives. The world belongs to the powerful, the people who have conviction, the power to influence, to achieve and to win. Goals and aspirations, temptations and attractions is all you and I are about in this world, be they big or small. The day we outgrow these, life would no longer be worth living.
But then again, it’s you who shall lay out your limits, yours goals, and define happiness your own way, define your own ‘big’ and ‘small’. Everyone might not be as ambitious as Alexander, everyone may not be a born winner but there is one thing that each one of us craves for, that’s happiness and success. Everyone work their own way through the matrix of this world to seek and win these. Where we go wrong is when we are unable to define our own goals, our own happiness and fail to identify and shape our own destiny and our own fate. “Life’s not a fair game”, I have heard so many people complain. I believe in it too; But a bit differently. Life’s a game where you can choose your own goals, define your own rules, change them at will, select the players you want to play with, take as much time as you want, do anything you feel like, reach anywhere and feel like a conqueror. It’s a win-win game, and yet you and I end up losing so often, but to whom; we never know. We end up losing because despite our best abilities and efforts, at some point in time, we leave and let go everything we once stood for. True Indians; we follow ‘Do the karma and don’t worry about the fruits’. What is the motivation to do anything well or do anything at all if you do not expect results? Why should anyone put efforts into anything that is not going to reap any fruits? I do not preach materialism and selfishness but we should learn to value our capabilities and efforts. We must learn to value our time and our expectations. Are they worth nothing?
We search for answers to our own questions in numerology, in astrology, in palmistry, in black magic, in prayers, in divinity, in exorcism. Little do we realize that all questions are best answered by the minds and hearts that ask these. The world seeks happiness in money, in relations, in responsibilities, in vanity, in nature, in art, in education, in sport, in politics, in God and in the devil. Each and every goal, each and every road to happiness is glorified by us. We run after these all our lives, never reach the so precious dreams we created ourselves, and then quit, at times, forever. The blame, the loss, the tragedy is all ours. We all have the power to personify lifeless objects, to end life, generate it again and to turn coal to diamond and iron to steel. Still we lose; we lose to none, but our own weaknesses, our own shortfalls.
To this, my friend added the age-old golden words “no one was born perfect”. But yes, no one was born so imperfect too. When we listen through our ears, think from the brain, see from our eyes, love from our hearts and speak from our lips, we perceive the world, as the world outside wants us to perceive it. We chase other’s dreams, their goals, their destinies, play with their rules and lose. The day we learn to listen from our hearts, speak from the eyes, love from the soul and not hear all we listen, we shall make our own rules; design a new game, play and play to win. All those whom we revere and remember for having succeeded in life, having won hands down, were the ones who never played other’s game. They had new goals, new roads, new playgrounds and thus no competition. Newton, Einstein, Socrates, Leonardo da Vinci, Pythagoas, Lincoln, Gandhi, mother Teresa or Bill Gates or the endless list of great musicians, leaders, rulers, sculptors or intellectuals, any number of pages would not suffice to append. Those who defined their own horizons, designed their own games and played from their hearts, heads and souls.... defined their own fate and their own destiny and never lost.
The biggest irony of the world is not in the way we link happiness to the minutest aims or how we waste our lives for much larger ones; it is in our inhibitions to make our own rules and play our own game. It is in the way that we so totally accept the rules made by other’s and play our lives with them and in the way we despair or exalt when we stall or excel in running after the goals, the standards and the aspirations of others, on their roads. We are so prompt in forgetting that even God never copied his own miracles, because what was once the road to glory for one would be a traversed broken footpath for the next.
Like Shakespeare once said, “All the world is a stage and we all have our own parts to play”, and the appreciation of the audience would not come, if you copied the lines of your co-stars. Write your own script, choose where you want to put them and enact this life, which is so flexible that any role would fit anywhere. Dream big and live big, because ultimately size does matter! Fate and destiny are just two words that describe the result of our own game. Welcome to your playground!