Destiny and Choice

Back to our favorite topic: destiny.

Have you read Victor Frankl's truism: "between stimulus and response lies the freedom to choose"? It just hit me this morning - the clear distinction between destiny and choice:

• Stimulus is destiny.
• Response is choice.

I then thought, "what about when we respond to the stimulus in a manner that allows us victory over its adversity, its challenge?"

I realized that victory takes us to another level with larger and more forceful stimuli acting upon and challenging us. Consider the example of business. A small firm grows to a medium-sized one. It succeeds in growing, but it also meets larger challenges. From local challenge, it graduates on to national, and then global challenge.

This is true for personal life too. Childhood is tough, there is so much to learn and there is so little freedom (or so we think!). But every subsequent phase in life is tougher than the last.

What about when we have beaten every challenge? When we are the most gifted, most successful, the top ranking? This poses a strange challenge. Suddenly, we have conquered the external stimuli. Suddenly, there is no stimulus. Nothing to fight for or against.

Why, then, live?

I rested my cup of tea, and focused on this thought: what about the gifted? What about the winners? What about someone like, say, Bill Gates whose book I just leafed through last night? What about when you are on the highest rung? What do you do to live?

...And then the dots connected. Ever heard Iqbal's couplet about Khudi (self-respect, self-actualization)? "Actualize and take thyself to such a summit that God will ask thee before thy destiny is formed, 'What doth thee wish for?'"

[Microsoft tag line: Where do you want to go today?]

You create your own stimulus when you have conquered the standard ones. This is a freedom that comes with responsibility to oneself, to one's gifts. And it is a great test. Though a few get this choice in more flagrant ways (being the world's richest man, etc.), many of us have more choice than we think. Whether we choose to exercise this freedom or not may be the strongest test of our spirit and character.

Note: Pulled this unpublished piece from amongst the drafts on December 08, 2007.

Because it's green

A' levels. Economics class. Teacher asks something about the text book. I told her I didn't want to read the book.

"Why?"

"Because it's green!" out came my reply. Dunno from where.

"That's the strangest reason I've heard for not studying a text book. 'It's green!'"The teacher was stunned. The class wsa stunned. And it took me about a minute to hear myself echoed off their lips. It DID sound weird.

"Because it's green"- in those three words, I revealed the most absurd reason - a prejudice against a bad ugly green color - for not reading a book. But, but. That was the color of the sickly green enamel I saw in hospitals when I was a kid. It's the color of the patients'/doctors' gowns on ER. Sick!

Anyhoo. I am sensitive to design. Now only if God blessed me with better designing skills myself. What am I thinking? I want to make this blog look bettah!

It's hot.

I am returning after a mini eternity to my lovely blog, and all I have to say is, "Ooh. May I have a glass of water please. [Pause] Er, bring me the jug."

I mean what is this? The clouds have been hogging the skies for a week, but not a drop of rain. Not in this city. Heard (and saw on TV) that Lahore's been practically flooded. I can't even imagine what a gigantic mess will Karachi be if it rains that sufficiently.

A trillion cars jam on a few decent roads would be a spectacle. This summer's War of the Worlds.

Twelve Monkeys

In the movie Twelve Monkeys, the hero (Bruce Willis) faces a strange contortion of fate. He is sent from the future to investigate & prevent a deadly viral outbreak which killed a large part of the humanity. He comes back in time, and finds himself in a looney bin. Here, he shares with his lunatic genius fellow inmate (Brad Pitt) his secret: he is from the future. He is here to investigate the story of the twelve monkeys which were the source of a virus.

Brad Pitt hooks on to that idea. As the movie unrolls, Bruce Willis discovers that it was indeed this lunatic who went on to derive the virus from the monkeys and break it loose. The irony? He got that idea from Bruce Willis' character who traveled back in time.

Isn't this the irony of foreknowledge? Of preimagining? Of knowing things that will be?

Foreknowledge is troubling. Sometimes I feel like the writer who writes a detailed script in her head. It's strange to see that script being acted out in real life, as it often does, to a great degree of accuracy.

One, it gives a thick, black feeling of surging power. Second, it makes me weak in the face of my own knowledge. There must be a control. But where? Is this knowledge a picture that realizes itself? Or do we get images of what is bound to be?

Sometimes I am very afraid of saying things that I know will happen for the fear that I am the source for initiating that idea. It is one of those twisted enigmas of life that we all deal with at some level. It is better to remain on the safe side and share not the idea.

For it makes me afraid of its realization. I think.... ugh, I will not discuss what I just thought.

///Silence.

Stupid Muslim

Have I written this before? Sometimes all I wish these days is to be a stupid Muslim. You know, the kind who follows without question. What was the meaning of the word Islam again? Aye, submission. Submission without question. Total, complete submission.

Well, honestly, I've always believed in God though I sometimes fashionably call myself agnostic. I am not agnostic; I have only tried to question/ prove/ resolve the enigmas of my faith. If that looks a bit like agnosticism, it may be because it is at least far removed from stupid Muslim-ism. Which I now pine for.

You know it's very - what shall I say? - intellectual to do things like determine how the universe was born, and whether it's actually multiverse. Artists and writers also worry about parallel universes. Did the universe explode and grow itself, or was there something before it? Who could have started all this, or have we just taken a form and substance of our own? Was it evolution or creation (by the way, I think both theories are true at once)? Is there any theory which can further befuddle the whole humanity about whether there is a God and what's the God's gender?

Is Dan Brown all factual in Da Vinci Code? And whether there's actually some sort of female goddess out there? Will science bow to religion, or religion give in to science?

A whole lot of issues for the humanity.

But honestly, what will these theories - proved or unproved - do? After all, it doesn't hurt to treat your family well. Or to clear a stone away from the path of the people. Or to help the needy. Or "have faith" in the time of distress. Call it think positive. Call it thinking about the future. By another name, it's called having faith. All these things make pretty common sense.

So what care I whether the universe is expanding or shrinking?

I just want to be stupid.