Symphonic Variations

I don’t quite understand how people can justify taking a stand on one side or the other of the fate / free-choice fence.

Even if you believe the decisions we make about our lives are ordained, to claim that our reactions to events and situations are likewise and entirely pre-determined and that how we feel about our circumstances doesn’t involve choice is to deny that we can learn from experience.  Follow it to its natural conclusion, and the fatalistic argument relegates the human race to an infantile consciousness and pointless existence, where efforts to direct our intentions are doomed to fail, self-awareness is impossible and personal growth is an illusion.  Accept that our world is entirely manipulated by an external force beyond our control, and our desires, hopes, dreams and regrets mean nothing.

That said, I’m just as contemptuous of the philosophy that fate’s got nothing to do with it.  I believe in fate, utterly.  I’m a free-choice advocate only in that I consider reality a function of perspective.  I think we’re inherently free to choose how we face our destiny.  That’s the trick, that’s the ticket, that’s the job.  That’s what life’s all about — facing death.  I’m not being morbid.  That’s our Fate.  We’re born to die.

Sorry.  I got side-tracked on this one.  A note arrived just before I sat down to write, announcing another friend’s final journey.  I’d been ruminating on the forces beyond our control before the email arrived, but I’d been envisioning them as an orchestra conductor, not an iconic scythe-bearing ghoul…

Last May, when I well and truly burned out, I thought if I changed my circumstances, I’d change what was basically wrong with my life.  For the 10 months leading up to May, I’d been so effing busy, the only way I could manage it was to organize every single minute of every single day.  I raced from one place, one job, one task, one thing to another, non-stop — and got it to work, for a while.  Then, around February, somebody showed up 10 minutes late to a meeting, and the whole thing fell apart.  March through May was an endless series of dominoes going down.  The system was kaput.  I could never catch up again.

Yeah, but the point is, I’d imagined that if I changed how many jobs I was working and how far I was commuting, if I lessened my workload and altered my priorities, the every-fucking-minute-of-every-fucking-day routine would no longer rule my life.

It hasn’t worked out that way at all.  I’ve just gone through another full month of racing from one moment to the next, culminating in a weekend of 12-hour shifts to finish up the job application I need to turn in tomorrow, grade last week’s homework, prep for tomorrow’s class — and get it all done in time to write a blog and post it before midnight.

I am a highly organized individual with a keen sense of how much time specific tasks require.  I totally nailed it, in the managerial sense.  In the temporal sense, I’ve got no control at all.  Changing my circumstances changed my circumstances, period.  Fate’s decided the tempo for this phrase of my life.  All I can do is play along, strive to keep up with the baton’s breakneck pace, hope I don’t hit too many wrong notes, and pray the next movement is an Adagio.