Fate or Destiny?
I’ve been thinking about these two words a lot recently. Not for the first time. Obviously, I’ve known the words since quite early on in my reading journey, but often viewed them in quite a passive way. More as nouns than verbs. As nouns I held them alongside words like fatalistic and fatalism, and saw destiny with Hollywood, future-gazing, elevated, super-hero overtones.
But as I’ve re-encountered these jewels in the past year, I’ve begun to make friends with them in a new way. As verbs. Active, or more precisely, pro-active, because I think that was the Greeks original intention.
The simplest and most practical meaning of both words is this: -
Fate is what happens to you. It's your circumstances. You had no choice about where you were born and who your parents were and who your siblings were, or were not. When you went to school you didn’t choose which classroom you would study maths in, any more than you chose who the other pupils would be, or what subjects the school would make available to you to study. Today you didn’t choose whether it was rainy or sunny, or which other drivers will be on the road when you travel. Much in life just happens. Circumstances happen. But fate stops right there. Unless, of course, you choose to turn fate into fatalism, in which case you react to life powerlessly, going with the flow of circumstance. You let life shape your story. Some put a divine rationale on this approach – Gods will, or Inshallah – whatever happens is what was meant to happen and where you end up is where you were meant to end up, like it or not. With a shrug of the shoulders we say, “there’s nothing I can do. I’m a pawn in a giant game of life”. (From my limited understanding, I don't actually think the original Jewish, Islamic, or Christian writings actually had this fatalistic interpretation)
Destiny, however, invites us to write a different story. Destiny is the recognition that each moment of fate is pregnant with possibility, with potential. You can’t choose who your parents were, but you can choose your response and the story you want to create out of that fate. Destiny is the full possibility of who you can become through your proactive response to your circumstance. Alex Navalny had a set of circumstances he found himself in, that few of us wouldn’t buckle under, but he chose his destiny. His choices, like going back to Russia after he was poisoned, created a new set of circumstances, but he then proactively made choices within these new fates. He had decided he needed to be a living example of what freedom from fear looks like, in order to inspire others to courage, even if it cost him his life. Mandela said the same at his famous Rivonia Trial speech[1]. Destiny invites us to set a direction, a set of values, convictions, aspirations; it becomes our life-compass, by which we can actively navigate ourselves towards who it is we want to become in our life. With that compass we can now actively respond to every simple circumstance that comes our way and use it as leverage to take another step towards who we desire to become.
What kind of employee do I want to be, what kind of spouse or partner do I want to be? What quality of character do I want to have? What legacy do I want to leave? We obviously don’t always get to choose what we do, but we do get to choose who we become and the every-moment, every-day fates give us a constant daily flow of opportunities to move towards our destiny. Heraclitus said that, Character is Destiny. The root of the word character is to engrave onto a piece of metal or stone; to cut a permanent groove that marks us out. Developing character is like cutting the grooves that move us towards the destiny of who we want to become.
The Greeks had a number of tenses to their verbs.
They had the Passive voice – the voice of fatalism. Let life push me where it will. The victim voice that says, ‘I can’t change anything; I’m stuck in this relationship/job/emotional state; nothing works out for me’.
They also had what is called the Active voice – the voice that says, ‘I can be who I want to be and do what I want to do. It includes the hero-voice that says, ‘nothing can stop me’.
They also had what was called the Middle voice. The middle voice was the secret weapon for using fate in order to discover destiny. The middle voice is an active response to whatever circumstances may throw at you. It’s the ability to spot, with one eye, a circumstance (a fate) and with the other eye fixed on your destiny (Why am I here? Who do I exist for? What is my contribution to life? What is the world and my soul asking of me?), you can use the fate to take a step towards destiny.
Victor Frankl, who had the extreme experience of living through Auschwitz, said that this ability to choose your response to fate, is the very bedrock of human dignity[2]. A simple question that writer and Jungian analyst, James Hollis,[3] asks at each encounter with fate is, what response will enlarge me right now? Fatalism has the subtle ability to trap us within a diminished life, while destiny has the potential to expand and enlarge us in who we are becoming.
Working creatively with the tension between fate and destiny is like a dance between what is happening to you and who you can become, and is captured beautifully in the last few lines of Dawna Markova’s poem, I Will Not Die An Unlived Life.
..to live
so that that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom
and that which came to me as blossom
goes on as fruit.
‘that which came to me…’ is fate
‘goes to the next as...’ is destiny
We take the seeds, or the blossoms, of fate. We see, or we search, for the possibilities in them, and then we work at turning them into something more. Destiny sees the potential in every single circumstance, for something larger to emerge both within us and through us, to the benefit of ourselves and world.
Photo by Pipp on www.freeimages.com
[1] The transcript of the trial speech
[2] Mans Search For Meaning Victor Frankl Rider 2004
[3] James Hollis What Matters Most Penguin 2009