You gotta have fate

How often has a chance meeting altered our lives, or happenstance secured us a win? No matter what one believes, it seems clear: our lives are shaped by forces beyond our reach. How does one contend with that surreality?

- Charles Assisi

It is tempting to believe that most of what I've accomplished is the outcome of hard work: Showing up. Staying at it. Paying attention when others drifted. Making choices that were often inconvenient and exhausting.

It is tempting, isn't it, to think of it in terms of cause and effect, effort and outcome.

That is a story we can tell with pride. The trouble is, it has never felt sufficient.

This occurred to me most recently on a drive through Kochi. A bus swerved. I hit the brakes. We kept going. But the near-miss lingered in the cabin. My cousin was in the passenger seat. We grew up together: two atheists who have watched each other rise and fail quietly over the years,

In the silence after the near-miss with the bus, she wondered aloud how much of our good fortune could be credited to the right decisions alone. How often did the thing work out not just because we planned it well, but because nothing got in our way? How often had a chance meeting altered our fates? Even our bodies and minds held up, in ways so many others did not.