Trask Avenue

Regardless of what form the higher power takes it does not guide or help us navigate our way through life. We exist in a gigantic cosmic crapshoot with no preconceived outcomes. The future is uncharted until it actually arrives. Fate does not exist, not in the way people describe it. Fate is an abstraction devised to bring order to vast, senseless circumstances. Fate implies a plan. Generally speaking life has no plan. How many people have actually lived the life they planned? We all feel a certain comfort looking back at the road which led us to our current position, then tracing the events. We want to connect the dots and create a nice logical path we can understand and, more importantly, tolerate. As humans we need that reason, that defined purpose, that grand design. But one doesn’t exist. We’re all being whipped back and forth on this speeding, out-of-control ride called Life. We come and go into each other’s madness – enriching, diminishing or simply passing through via shared experiences.

What about Destiny? Destiny is just another spin on Fate. Of course you can claim Destiny played a part in getting that job you love or meeting that special person who fills your nights or buying that winning lottery ticket. But the concept is inherently meaningless because it only allows for the result which occurs. Like Fate Destiny always ends up being what it promises to be – the unavoidable result of multiple events. Unless you believe in a Destiny never realized, the entire conceit is another attempt to rein in the swirling morass of past possibility and mold it into tasty, digestible morsels.

What purpose then does a higher power serve? The higher power exists far beyond the individual. It is a source of unfathomable energy which oversees the universe in total. The higher power sets broad actions in motion and then lets the consequences play out via free will. The higher power looks at all those free will driven events which have disrupted the overall balance then decides which actions to set in motion to re-energize that balance. The higher power is not concerned with good or evil, right or wrong. The higher power is not concerned with individuals. The higher power cares about ensuring free will on an enormous group consciousness level. The higher power could guide, could direct the individual, but does not because to do so would eliminate the beauty of choice and possibility.

If there is no grand plan, no Fate and no Destiny, if life is just a giant crapshoot, where does that leave us as individuals? It leaves us with the ability to choose. Our choices are self-directed attempts to feed inner demons, to accommodate core values we have adopted for whatever reasons. Our choices are nothing more than decisions, neither good nor bad. Who is to say one set of core values is better than another? Who gave one human being the power to dictate that for another human being? Decisions are made with the hope of a specific destination, but never with the certainty of it. Often, they lead to places never imagined. As individuals we live our lives among all this confusion and distraction and possibility, and in the end take the course we feel best serves us. And when trillions and trillions of individual decisions disrupt the balance of the universe the higher power swoops in to correct it.