Aspire & Fate*

Yesterday on the way back from the eye specialist, our eldest friend of 85years and I had the most interesting conversation on how we do not aspire to reach an advanced age, for some, it is just fated.

Our elderly Professor friend, who had a prolific academic career told me of how they refer to their peer generation dying, “hulle kap al in ons bos”, meaning they are taking down trees in their forest. It is a very intense time in people’s lives when most of their friends and even family have passed on and they are still healthy yet not feeling as if they belong here anymore.

So much of our lives we spend aspiring.  We are endlessly aspiring to be better, more, prettier, healthier, kinder, calmer, etc. The core of aspiring comes from our misidentification of who we are.  We are told from a very young age that what we got, our Divine design as I like to call it, is not good enough or somehow lacking.

There is a pre-set idea of what qualities you must have to be good and what you must avoid. I often use the example of not having patience. Yet my design is such that it can engage with life at light speed. Yes, it may show up as impatience, but it has its purpose. For successful relationships it is most definitely something that I need to manage, omitting it is just never an option.

Which at its core means that what you got as your design, might or might not fit society’s idea of what is good. I of course do not mean that we can run around with douchebaggery behaviour and blame our design. Yet it does mean we need to honour our design (Swadharma).

Our design was given to add to the collective in a meaningful and supporting manner. Before starting the Intro 2 Vedanta course, I question the need for such a course many times. The argument was that James Swartz, is such a skilled teacher and his work on ShiningWorld is so vast and thorough, why will people not just go there.

It became clear, with the help from a few friends, that it was this design, that would convey the same teaching in a different way and that is what is needed by the collective. Ramana Maharshi said it perfectly concise; “Whatever is destined not to happen will not happen, try as you may. Whatever is destined to happen will happen, do what you may to prevent it.”

I have observed this many times. This is quite a famous quote of him, yet the important beginning sentence is often not quoted; “The Ordainer prevailing everywhere makes each one play his role in life according to his karma”. The Ordainer is his name for God/Ishvara. This addition clearly provides needed context for what is destined to happen or not.

Every effort clearly points to aspiring and in the end, fate/destiny will be the deciding factor.

What would change if you keep that idea in mind when you set goals that you will aspire to?

This blog is not to convince you not to aspire, it just shares the knowledge that you are not in control of what you will be able to achieve.

And in the event, it does not pan out, that you rest in the knowledge that it could not have been any other way.

 

* Jou Strewe en Jou Lot