Serendipity

They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder and while I hope that's true of my rabid though minuscule fan base here at faith versus fear I suspect my absence has barely been noticed. I've wanted to write I simply haven't had anything to say. I know, I know, there have been primary elections locally, national political debate about health care, nearly the entire cycling and baseball seasons have past...normally all things that I would have something to say about, why not this year? It was the question. You may recall (and if you don't that's what archives are for) that in one of my last posts I spoke of my decision to go to law school and of a friend who asked me if I was happy with that to which my answer was mostly.

So, after much shock that this person knew me so well, I turned my highly honed debating sense on myself. Mostly happy meant partly unhappy and I had to ask myself why. That's what I've been doing and I'm not sure I have all the answers yet, nor am I at all sure that anyone cares to hear about my internal debate about what to do with my life (even if the original title of this blog was "we'll die with our options open").

If I haven't returned to write self-reflective posts, then why have I ended my hiatus? What prompted me to return to writing?

It was language, and a John Cusack movie (as is to be expected from me I suppose). Last night I got home from work, exhausted, for no good reason...okay a couple of good reasons (beer and whiskey are one, Happy Birthday again my perceptive friend if your reading this, and then staying up too late trying to work out wireless network issues)...the point remains that I was tired, too tired to be bothered even with surfing the channels looking for something good to watch on television. As luck would have it I turned on the TV and something decent happened to be on the channel it was already on.

Serendipity. Not Cusack's best film, sure, but one worth watching. So I did and I enjoyed, as always, the Piven/Cusack dynamic. I'm continually fascinated by these two actors as actors and people. They are, or so it is said, lifelong friends which I think is amazing, perhaps because I don't have many people I can count as lifelong friends. I have a couple (though I don't keep in touch with them as well as I should) and I have at least two that I've only met in the last few years but that I suspect will be lifelong friends, but Piven and Cusack have that history and I'm intrigued by it. Also, they grew up in the same Chicago suburb as my mother, a place that despite the infrequency of my visits to it has always seemed like a second home to me. In any event I'm captivated by them and they fact that they appear together in a film is really enough reason for me to watch it.

At the end of Serendipity Piven's character (Dean), an obit writer for the NY Times, gives Cusack's (Jonathan) the obituary that he wrote for him claiming he'd had writers block trying to come up with a best man speech for Jonathan's now canceled wedding. The mention of writer's block was the first thing that made me think maybe it was time for me to start writing again, but then (in voice over) Dean reads the obit and finally I had something to say.

The last line of that obit is, "Ultimately Jonathan concluded that if we are to live life in harmony with the universe, we must all possess a powerful faith in what the ancients used to call 'fatum', what we currently refer to as destiny". My first thought was that what the ancients called "fatum" and what we refer to as destiny are not the same concept, and my second thought was that it was a fitting topic for me to write about given the faith required to believe in either.

I realize the distinction is subtle but fate and destiny are not the same thing. Of course, being the language nerd I am I looked up both the definitions and the etymologies to confirm my theory and found that in reality (at least from a definition stand point) I am absolutely wrong, but I'm going to make my case anyway because a) I think the etymology backs me up and b) I think you'll agree I'm right.

The word "fate" does indeed come from the ancient Greek "fatum" which meant spoken (by the Gods) whereas the word "destiny" comes from Old French "destinée" meaning, to make firm or establish. I suppose whether or not you accept my argument will depend on whether or not you believe in free will. You might make the claim that it doesn't matter whether or not you or I believe in free will but whether or not the ancient Greeks did (but that's a whole other argument about etymology in general that I won't get into). If you do believe in free will then just because something is spoken by God (or the Gods) doesn't necessarily mean it will happen, it maybe means it should happen, that it probably will happen, but the ultimate outcome is dependent on the choices you make. In other words if something is fated to happen it is not made firm or established, but something that is destined to happen is established.

So, I say fate and destiny are two separate concepts and likely if you believe in one you don't believe in the other. Or rather, if you do believe in free will you might or might not believe in fate but you couldn't believe in destiny. There are probably a few people out there who believe that we have free will just not all the time, they believe in an interventionist God who lets us be as long as we don't stray too far from His plan, but I think they're a minority. Generally either you believe everything is determined already and, like actors in a play, we're just saying our lines, or you believe that we're improvising (to stick with the metaphor).

So, do I "posses a powerful faith"? In somethings for sure, but not in destiny. I think we are making it up as we go along and if God (or the Gods) has/have a plan it's a flexible one. Of course, I don't really posses a powerful faith in that either, I'm more than willing to accept that I might be wrong. He/They could be up there (wherever that is) laughing at me right now for living out their plan to the letter all the while thinking it was my own idea.