Quirks of Fate
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You often meet your fate on the road you take to avoid it.
Goldie Hawn
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When we start out in life we have little or no idea where we might end up. I never imagined I would be where I am now doing whatever it is that I do. For a brief while, maybe five years or so, I had an ambition to be a university academic. It is probably the only ambition that I harboured in a professional sense. It was not quite what I imagined. There was a lot of repetition.
Aside from any unexpected quirk of fate I have a fairly pragmatic view of what remains in store for this life.
Life can be seen as having many phases. When one phase draws to a close a chapter ends. When one has exhausted all the plot lines and available scenarios within a given theme, it is time to turn over a page.
My self-perception now differs markedly from what it did. There is no sense of pressing purpose, no bucket list of things to do. I do not feel the urge for any evangelism. I can rabbit on here like any loony you might find sitting in the corner of a London pub, alone and talking to himself. Nobody will sit at my table unless the pub is really jammed, in case I talk to them.
I don’t feel a sense of mission. Like many people my age I am withdrawn from the world. My time has passed.
Using the logic of fate it was always fated that I would end up here as I am now. All is therefore dandy and just as it was meant to be.
A phase might be seen as an extended psychotic episode which has to be endured and survived. When the episode ends something new might take its place. We could all be having a massive acid trip full of hallucinations. Which from a Buddhism philosophical sense we are, caught up in endless illusion and delusion.
For a number of years I taught science and had some kind of a pedagogical role. That has ended about a decade ago. It was a phase. It was a world to which I cannot ever return.
I have learned about the earth, the ground and estate management. I have been in tune with by direct immersion in, the seasons.
One of the surprise quirks of fate in this life has been just how much patient waiting it has involved. I have waited and developed a sense of forbearance which differs from our current instantaneous gratification times.
Despite being ostensibly social and even a party animal in my twenties I am now a recluse in a foreign land. I do not impinge upon nor inflict myself on others.
There was a place I avoided going to in 1982, later I ended up there and an element of my fate unfolded. I had had a guttural sense of steer well clear. Later I forgot. It was perhaps meant to be.
The question I have currently is what might the next chapter look like and where might that be. Something tells me that over next few months there is going to be quite a lot of change in the world, there are a lot of tensions. It may be premature to seek an answer because the world may change in the meantime.
It might be another case of sit tight and see what happens.
One thing is for sure the grandiosity in my dreaming has passed. The dreaming has pretty much ground to a halt because of two surgeries and general anaesthesia. Narcotic painkillers have not helped.
What needs to play out has played out. I have no idea what is going on beyond the compound and in the minds of others. We are in a little bubble which is unlikely to burst, though it may. In many ways the outer world is not much of my concern. I have to live in it, but I have no influence thereupon.
The world and the people in it will do whatever it is they think they want to do. They will prioritise whatever they deem most pressing and urgent.
They will avoid stuff which may help them to unfold their fate.
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When we start out in life we have little or no idea where we might end up.
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She came from Planet Claire
I knew she came from there
She drove a Plymouth Satellite
Oh, faster than the speed of light
Planet Claire has pink air
All the trees are red
No one ever dies there
No one has a head
B52s
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