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Saturday, October 18, 2014

Intertwining paths

The strongest case that I know of for the idea of destiny and fate is Sophocles' Oedipus the King.  It's fiction from a really long time ago, but it lays out the case nicely for how life weaves events beyond one's control and knowing, then brings the strands together in a way that Oedipus could not do anything different than what he did.  He had a date with destiny that swamped his boat.  The event didn't kill him, but it certainly changed everything possible about his life in a tragic way.


A modern and less deterministic treatment for the idea of destiny is depicted in the film from 2001, Serendipity.  The two main characters, Jonathan and Sara lived in two different countries, and after a chance meeting in NYC, they parted again, hoping that destiny would lead them back together again.  Just when it didn't appear that a reunion would happen, their shared token of a symbol of their love resurfaces and leads them to actively pursue finding the other person again.  This fiction story had a fairy tale ending, unlike Oedipus the King.


The new movie, The Best of Me, put a bit of new twist to the old theme of destiny.  It allowed the two main characters, who had been estranged for 20 years, to appear in the other's dreams, as a foreshadowing of good things to come for them both.  Their "chance" meeting after 20 years apart healed their old wounds.  It fulfilled their dreams and their unrequited love.  The best of each of the two main characters was only seen as the two were led to a brief healing/cleansing/blending moment in time together.  The plot was not a gushing love story, but a story laced with reality and the irony of  thwarted love happening simultaneous to the greatest fulfillment of love.  The moment in which both of those ideas met happened without either of the character's planning before or after the healing/cleansing/blending moment because destiny had led them to that moment.

I have personally resisted the idea of destiny and fate, but every time there has been an intersection of my life with someone else's, I have wondered why our paths crossed.  If there really is an answer to that question, then I should stop resisting the idea.  But I have usually seen the intersection of my life with someone else's as happenstance.

I do have, however, one exception to that view, but only one.  In that single instance, I have never identified the path that led to the intersection. The point of intersection was clearly understood, but the path leading away from that intersecting point never yielded the reason for the separation of paths leaving it as unclear as the path leading in.



 However, I would say that that one intersection has altered my view because I am so much more..

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