The Hand of Fate: Part I

THE HAND OF FATE

PART I: INCEPTION

“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.”  - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is a gift with multi-layered packing. No one knows where does one gets its energy or the courage to stand the test of time. There are several unexplained phenomena in life that one can only feel but not describe in human words. 

"Oh, I'm a fortune's fool!", says Shakespeare in his Romeo and Juliet. The most interesting wandering of the mind is felt when it starts drawing parallels with the surroundings. You go on a walk with your best friend and suddenly after a few meters, the legs get synched. This is no fate as science had earlier suggested that the brain has this mechanism of getting in the 'perfect rhythm' with the person or thing it is closely associated with at that moment. The Neocortex (or Neopallium) is responsible for performing higher functions efficiently, such as those of sensations, language & reasoning. In other words, it is the human part of the brain. Cognitive learning is what makes a person what he/she becomes.

Most people see the world as they want to see, and it has been a practice that we tend to fool ourselves quite often. An agnostic won't believe in the miracles of the world even if he/she can witness it. The callous mind wanders off to deduce the occurring. The person lives in pain, in sorrow - in the eyes of an optimist. A lovely movie duology came in the 90's titled Before Sunrise & Before Sunset which portrays the Hand of Fate much clearly. There are these two people meeting by 'chance' and leaving only to re-unite after 9 years. What would eat the atheist the most inside would be "what did they do in those 9 years?" Same thing goes with life, we lose a few people along the way, meet new people & that is the way our life functions. Only during our testing times do we realize the importance and the beauty of the merrier ones, rather the past ones which seem dear only now[THINK!]. 

“We are - all of us born with a letter inside us, and that only if we are true to ourselves, may we be allowed to read it before we die.”  - Douglas Coupland

Genetics states that our genes are the only pre-programmed units of life & that whatever we do, think or even create comes from that programming ergo, the sequence of the nucleotide base pairs. Applying this logic to a larger mass, by extension, leads us into  thinking that the actions of all the living beings present on earth had already been determined and thus in a way, the world is in fact actually a play & we all are mere artists. But one wonders to the heed paid to the amount of details that our actions possess such as looking at something, smelling something  - the notion of pre-program feels rather rhetoric in such events. Now even if it has been pre-programmed, who is the programmer? A rationalist believes that everything is a coincidence, a believer believes it as a way of God or some supreme power. No matter who we are, there's no denying that there's a superpower that exists in the universe that creates, guides & leads us to our destination. In a population of more than 7 bn how can only a few handful of people get so close to us? 

Two people aren't meant to be at the same place at the same time at once, how about jinxes? How does one explain Deja vu? How is it that a person is able to wish another person "Happy Birthday" precisely on time without having actually possessing its knowledge? Co-incidences do occur but only co-incidences do not. Such 'co-incidences' defy the common logic that we are equipped with. We fear the aliens, mostly because we don't know them. A human being is always afraid of things that it doesn't know. Knowing is everything for us. We know a pet dog won't bite us because he has been trained such but we don't know that a stray dog would only bite us! It is a wonderful life we all lead. All I can say regarding fate is that it is a feeling, sort of a pseudo-sense that comes to those who truly believe.

Since the topic is so vast that I cannot cover even it's 10% in a single post, I'm going to write it in parts - as and when new thoughts emerge into my mind.

In the end, I'd suggest the reader to take a look at the ending scene of Signs, a movie by M.Night Shyamalan, the window scene towards the end. This post is inspired by the track of same name, used in the climatic scene of Signs. Funny, I didn't quote my inspiration in the beginning- maybe because it wan't meant to be!

“Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like.” - Lemony Snicket