Once too often, I was always asked the same question, by the same person.
Is it destiny or is it choice? And every time my answer would vary and be a
little bit different as I would weigh all that had happened in between then and the
last time I was asked the same question and I would rethink and decide that I
was still not convinced by the answer of my choice. As much as I fought for
choice as the answer, somewhere destiny did keep sticking it’s nagging head in
and silently making a strong foothold over choice.
You see, I was always brought up in an extremely scientific
environment, which was always swept clean of any superfluous or irrational
thought. We were taught to believe that the only thing that made a difference
were the choices that we made in life and our decisions, which would affect the
outcome of our journeys. I cannot disagree with that even till today and yes I
do believe our decisions on a day-to-day basis do define the next stage on the
sets of life. But is there something more powerful at play? Is there a
predetermined larger scheme of things guided by a force that we refuse to recognize,
as we haven’t been tutored to believe in it?
An incident happened a couple of year’s back that made me
retrace my steps and once again evaluate my own thought process. A few years
back I had gone on vacation to the Mediterranean and once aboard a fancy Royal
Caribbean cruise I decided to pick up a few souvenirs for loved ones. So I
bought a t-shirt for a very dear Uncle of mine. Once I returned I gifted it to him
and soon after since he had been suffering from a malignancy, he passed away. A
year later I went to our ancestral home, where he had lived his entire life and
which was located in a very small town in India, for his first death
anniversary. To my amazement I found a favourite household help of my Uncles’s
wearing that Royal Caribbean t-shirt that I had gifted to my Uncle. I then found
out that before his death my Uncle had gifted that particular t-shirt to this
fellow. As trivial as this incident sounds it just made me look at the larger
perspective and think of how a t-shirt that was made somewhere in the middle of
Europe, had been bought as a gift for somebody in India, had ended up on a man,
who had absolutely no idea of what the Royal Caribbean was all about, in a tiny
village in India.
I cannot say whether it was the destiny of that t-shirt to
make this journey or of that man’s to own it. But here I was face to face with
destiny and marveling at it for sure as this was not the journey that I had
intended or chosen for that gift for my Uncle.
Life is unpredictable and as much as we like to plan nothing
ever works out exactly like that. After much questioning and many mental dilemma’s I
have come to appreciate that true happiness lies in enjoying the beauty of the
unplanned and all the hidden surprises that come along in that package. Maybe
it is destiny over choice and maybe the only thing that is required from our
end is some faith in our destiny.
About
the author: Neha Parmar is a wildlife photographer and a conservationist
with some tolerable talent for writing. If you liked, connected or have a
contrary perspective with anything that you read please feel to share your
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