How Does It Work for Ya?
The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
Abraham Lincoln
I read this today about Abraham Lincoln, some time in the past I also read about his popular letter to his son where he advised him not to give up until he made he last effort and not to make his last effort until he was sure it would yield the wanted result. I’m a strong believer of this principle, I’ve lived it several times in my life, and however the trend of things in the last six months leaves me with no further saying to consider but the one right below.
Never let your persistence and passion turn into stubbornness and ignorance.
Anthony J. D'Angelo,
I‘ll spare you the details of it. But it all brings to mind the controversies about Destiny and ability of prayers to change the course of things. Do these things really work???? I’ve never been a spiritual type, and I have all intentions to stay so. This leaves me with just some wise words from a guy I did not really admire his personality but always adored his words. I am talking about a one time Governor of one of the Northern states in Nigeria who once said the “Downfall of a man is not the end of his life” Ironically this man’s downfall which came a week after passing this comment turned out to be the end of his life. He fell from a Horse back and broke his spine. If the power of words is anything to go by, I’ll definitely wish for some thing different. I at least have this very fundamental understanding of life. I see it as a continuous struggle, the day you stop struggling...you’ll stop being. Seen from a different perspective, it’s all about falling and rising again. It takes a fall to appreciate a rise and that’s the most interesting thing about it all, uncertainty about which comes next, a rise or a fall, I guess life would have been miserably boring if there was absolute certainty about when we’ll rise/Fall, it’s like knowing the score of the world cup finals even before the qualifies kick off. I’ll let you to scale up/down the effect of being in perfect control of our destiny through prayers etc. It’s all up to your imaginations.
I see life as not just about the number of times you fall but the number of times you rise after falling…I can at least make out a fulcrum between Abraham Lincoln and Anthony J. D’Angelo’s Views…But I’m surprisingly not able to offere a good explanation about the destiny part of it and the control we have over it (be it through prayers or other wise) What do you think about this or rather how do you see it ????
Abraham Lincoln
I read this today about Abraham Lincoln, some time in the past I also read about his popular letter to his son where he advised him not to give up until he made he last effort and not to make his last effort until he was sure it would yield the wanted result. I’m a strong believer of this principle, I’ve lived it several times in my life, and however the trend of things in the last six months leaves me with no further saying to consider but the one right below.
Never let your persistence and passion turn into stubbornness and ignorance.
Anthony J. D'Angelo,
I‘ll spare you the details of it. But it all brings to mind the controversies about Destiny and ability of prayers to change the course of things. Do these things really work???? I’ve never been a spiritual type, and I have all intentions to stay so. This leaves me with just some wise words from a guy I did not really admire his personality but always adored his words. I am talking about a one time Governor of one of the Northern states in Nigeria who once said the “Downfall of a man is not the end of his life” Ironically this man’s downfall which came a week after passing this comment turned out to be the end of his life. He fell from a Horse back and broke his spine. If the power of words is anything to go by, I’ll definitely wish for some thing different. I at least have this very fundamental understanding of life. I see it as a continuous struggle, the day you stop struggling...you’ll stop being. Seen from a different perspective, it’s all about falling and rising again. It takes a fall to appreciate a rise and that’s the most interesting thing about it all, uncertainty about which comes next, a rise or a fall, I guess life would have been miserably boring if there was absolute certainty about when we’ll rise/Fall, it’s like knowing the score of the world cup finals even before the qualifies kick off. I’ll let you to scale up/down the effect of being in perfect control of our destiny through prayers etc. It’s all up to your imaginations.
I see life as not just about the number of times you fall but the number of times you rise after falling…I can at least make out a fulcrum between Abraham Lincoln and Anthony J. D’Angelo’s Views…But I’m surprisingly not able to offere a good explanation about the destiny part of it and the control we have over it (be it through prayers or other wise) What do you think about this or rather how do you see it ????
posted by Chyke at 6:51 PM
1 Comments:
There is no destiny. It is as simple as that.
You walk into a café, somewhere you're stopping over for a day while on a business trip, and you sit down. You get a coffee, and because you are in a hurry, you try to drink it too fast. It burns your mouth, and you curse. The woman sitting next to you at the counter smiles, and offers you a tissue for the coffee that dripped onto your pants, but you feel like even the coffee is out there to get you today, and you just thank her and walk away to your meeting.
The woman doesn't become your wife, because you never see her again. There is no plan that didn't foresee you getting to know her. Such a plan would be so unbelievably complex, it simply cannot exist.
Also, you, in that single blip of time it took you to walk out on her, could have decided differently. I believe that such a scene in a life of a person, once replaid (which is of course impossible), could lead to a different outcome. If you don't believe in destiny, you have to believe in a smallest possible element of everything, something that does not obey anything or anyone. It just is, and it is absolutely happy that way. We'll never figure out what it is. If it didn't exist, then every single event in this universe would be a logical result of the last one.
Now what you can do, and which has to be the most important thing to believe in, ever and always, is that you are a being able to learn. You can instill in yourself, neuron by neuron and thought by thought, a mechanism that creates destiny: yours. Every time this amazing apparatus hits a split-second, it evaluates it, and if it knows what to do, because you have told it to, it acts. It controls, just this once, the random movement that builds everything. You have made a choice.
Other times, you just react. Most if the time, actually.
The hard part is admitting to this, and at the same time believing in, and accepting the responsibility of, the fact that you can influence life.
For the most part, that's concerning the rising part of things, which is infinitely harder than the falling. Everybody can fall, and gravity always tells you that staying down is perfectly acceptable.
Praying is focussing. The more focussed you are, the more split-seconds you are able to see clearly, and act on them. Hopefully, you are praying for something good.
I will quote, too, from the first Italian book I really enjoyed reading: "You are not a machine, nor have you ever been one." Or put in another way: you always have the power to say yes or no, and to face the consequences of that. It's the only control over things that you have, and yet it is an incredible instrument. It also creates uncertainty, which I am afraid of, and will probably always be.
I don't know what it is that inspired you to deny or start to believe in destiny, but it must be a bitch of a problem for you to write those lines in your blog.
The only advice I can give you that I actually know to contain some sense is to talk this over with as many good people that you know, and to have ready a plan B that eventually leads to whatever plan A was all about. And to never forget for one second how amazing looking down was every time you got up again.
Cheers,
Jan
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