The paradox of existence

After a recent conversation with my mother, my mind was confounded by three concepts – Fate, Prayer and Personal Responsibility. I spent the last couple of weeks obsessing over these three concepts and how they relate to one another. To me, these three concepts are almost mutually exclusive, and personal responsibility is the only one of the three that I subscribe to. However, I realize that people around me have varying degrees of faith in the other two concepts that I rejected. So, I wanted to walk through my head and open my current beliefs up to challenge and see if I would change my attitude after some reflection.

I do not believe in predestination. There is no Que Sera Sera in my belief system. I was brought up to believe that God had made some plans for all of us. Very often, I used to hear that “whatever is fated to happen, will happen”. I was never totally sold on that. I saw life’s events as coincidences of the conscious actions of myself and those around me. I saw forces of nature as additions to this equation rather than the generators of this equation. It is tempting to attribute life’s fortunes and misfortunes to fate. It is convenient to use fate to make sense of life, especially during hard times that we don’t think we deserve. However, for control freaks like me, sharing responsibility for my life with something as abstract as fate is not at all easy. I like to keep a tight grip on the relationship between my personal will and the events in my life. The notion of fate actually distresses me, and I feel reassured only when I tell myself that there is a logical explanation for what is happening around me instead of letting fate account for everything I can’t explain.

I do believe in prayer. It’s just not the same kind of prayer as prostrating and reciting verses to appease God and to make Him willing to grant my wishes. I do not believe that telling God what I want has any bearing on whether I get it or not. Prayer means something totally different to me. It was the song “Vaedham” from Salangai Oli that first made me realize what the true meaning of prayer was. The theme of the song is the selfless dedication that the dancer has to the art. It has lyrics that loosely translate to “The melding of music and dance is a penance” and “The Vedas are embedded in the sound of the Salangai”. In a broader sense, I believe that prayer is anything that is done is done with such a deep level of dedication and sacrifice that a person gives up his body, mind and soul for something. To me, that is where the magic really is. I believe that there is no greater prayer than a student’s dedication to learning an art, or a parent’s dedication to nurture a child. I “pray” by displaying grit and determination and by sacrificing certain things in order to attain the things in life that are truly important. That is the kind of prayer that actually works.

If life is a matter of predestined events and answered prayers, where does personal responsibility come in? In my opinion, personal responsibility trumps all cosmic activity. I do not lead my life believing that I am a pawn in the grand scheme of life and that I am leading a life that has already been chosen for me by a higher power. I believe that it is my choices that shape my life. Good or bad, I hold myself fully responsible for how my life turns out. I never blame my misfortunes on fate or on God for not listening to me. This attitude of mine gets me in trouble sometimes. For example, I have many homosexual friends and I love and respect them the same way I love and respect my other friends. However, there is one fundamental thing that we disagree on. I believe that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice instead of an orientation. I don’t think people are “born homosexual” any more than they are “born to prefer apples to oranges”. I applaud my gay friends for choosing an unconventional lifestyle, but I tend to disagree when they start saying things like they were “born that way”. Well then, if I don’t even let something as scientific as DNA overshadow personal responsibility and choice, why would I ever let cosmic events do so?

I am unable to find a way to stomach the concepts of fate or prayer exactly like people around me do. I have many, many questions, and no satisfying resolutions. One fine day, I went straight to the source of the confusion. When I next spoke to my mother, I asked her how exactly one could believe in predestination, pray for a good life, and hold people responsible for their actions all at the same time. This is what she told me. Apparently, our lives are determined by fate. However, people have the power to divert fate if they are intelligent enough. (Vidhiyai mathiyaal maatralaam.) That’s apparently what people pray for – the intelligence to be able to change their fate. Very cute, but not quite enigmatic enough to sway me.

I do not question the validity of what other people think about this matter. I still believe that we’re all looking at the same thing from different angles. My own beliefs, however, don’t seem to have changed as a result of this exercise. Not yet.