What is fate? Some people believe that your path is predetermined from conception, that everything you are, and everything you do is set before you can even open your eyes. The obstacles you face and your reaction to them are beyond your control. I disagree, truthfully. I find the very idea of destiny to be laughable. Surely there are gods above and yes, they control events, but they can't control your reactions. We all have a choice.
Before me lies two paths, shrouded in darkness. I choose which path to step onto but I have no control on where that path will lead. The control I hold over what is to happen next is an illusion, for once I make that choice, I am but a raft, being pulled along with the rivers current until another fork appears, bringing with it yet another decision. Is this what life was meant to be? A series of decisions with miles of uncertainty between them?
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."
In life, nothing can be real. Sometimes I wonder if this is all a dream, maybe nothing I've done is true and I'm really lying in a coma, imagining this all whilst people weep over my true body, lying inert in the hospital. Perhaps the Matrix was true, and we do exsist in a computer program. Can anyone say for sure what this life is. A series of questions is all I ever hear but answers escape us all.
Monks spend their entire lifes, shunning all of society to find inner peace and the answers to lifes questions, only to die alone and unknown in the monestary, buried upon the only grounds they've even known. Does this bring them any more happiness than life grants the rest of us?
Every creature on this planet dies alone. For even surrounded by people, our deaths can only be described as a solitary act. We each see our own greetings, our own thoughts, that no one can else can even fathom. What does await us after death? Do we move onto "heaven" or "hell" and spend the rest of eternity in splendor or despair? Earth is hell. Life is hell. The Buddhists (as well as other religions) believe in the cycle of reincarnation. That karma delivers us from one life into the next, our souls recycled, and in the next life, we pay for the mistakes of our last. Thus, we live a life of shame and misery if we weren't righteous in our last. Perhaps death only brings blackness, eternally. We simply rot away and the concept of a soul is only an illusion. Seems to be a peaceful theory. No pain. No joy. Just eternal solitude. Surely we all hit points in our life where we can accept, even embrace, that theory.
In the end though, all we have are more questions, and uncertainty, and pain. People say "there must be more to life than this." But I ask you, what if there isn't? What are you going to do then?
