I wonder what I would do if I really did control my own destiny.
There are those who argue you that I do. Fatalism is on a decline. People these days want to believe that causes have effects and so forth. And the idea of an irrantional force or Being that messes around with our lives, if for no other reason then to make life unpredictable, is less attractive nowadays. I often get asked the age-old question, "Do you believe in fate?" Fundamentally i do not. I think all that stuff about pre-determined life lengths and palm readings is a bunch of crap. If my lifeline was shorter then my twin's, wouldn't it be logically impossible for me to kill him? That's my bleak way of illustrating the fundamental flaw of fatalism - it imposes on us impossibilities that really aren't impossible. Maybe i'll redeem myself and say, "Bring me the man with the shortest lifeline so that I may take the next bullet for him!" That sounds a bit more noble.
But all discussions of fate aside, everyone still has to admit one thing: we share this world with a few billion other people, each with his/her own individual motives. So you can't control everything! Everyone's a stakeholder in everyone else's life. Somethings are out of our power, just by the very definition of what a human being is. So then, given that we can't control everything, but we strive in life to control as much as we can (finances, living situations, health, etc), what would I really do if one day I controlled it all? Is there a point to life beyond the process of work that we do within it?
Maybe there is an ultimate meaning to life aside from the process of living, but who really knows what that is? If not, then that leads to a peculiar conclusion: Life would be bad, if there was nothing bad in life. If we had nothing to work for, nothing to work against, then life would be, not just boring, but ultimately bad. This is probably a tired philosophical argument. It has a touch of existentialism in it, and probably a dash of some other topics in it as well.
My question is, why am I specifically working through this process? Ultimately prestige, money, acclaim, children, titles, happy moments, family, all of those things are mere points along the path of my life. They will have their own novelty, and they will all come to pass. But what will I really be able to keep with me and pass on to the generations to come? What do I offer that will carry with it the resounding force to be known as 'Jamil'?
So I think about the power of literature. I remember reading in a book by Paul Davies, a physicist, an argument that illustrated the power of literature. Whereas, all forms of matter and energy are forced to exist within the framework of our 4-dimensional universe, literature allows for information to transcend both time and space. To this day we are influenced by the works of Confucius, Shakespeare, Einstein despite the fact that they are gone. Indeed, through their works, they have achieved immortality. But they all found their niche. They all had a special vision on some aspect of reality, and were able to offer future generations incomparable clarity about the world. What about me? What's special about my vision? Do I have my own vision? Or is my vision simply a summation of the visions I've come to bear witness to and understand? Am I origional? Were they? As a biologcial system that learns entirely from its environment, is there any room for originality? If so, I hope there's room for me!
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