Will You Answer Destiny’s Call?

 

Sliding Doors is a movie that came out years ago with Gwyneth Paltrow, in which they alternate between two different realities based on her making it through the sliding door of the subway train when she is going home from work. If she catches the train, she also catches her husband with another woman in their bed. If she misses the train, then he is alone when she arrives (thus she doesn’t know he is cheating on her) and stays married to him.

 

 

In each parallel universe she becomes a different person. How many split second decisions based on the timing of a moment can you think of?  How many alternate timelines could there be, where I was one minute later or earlier?  Would my life have drastically changed if a minor incident had not happened because of that one minute? 

 

If my nephew had not chosen to walk through the park that night, maybe his random murder would not have happened.  Maybe he would still be alive.  Since I started LemonadeMakers as a result of his death, maybe I would have never started it.  So many possibilities stemming from a couple of maybe’s.

 

 

When I was last on jury duty, one night driving home, another car making a right hand turn came into my lane and dented up my car. It was a case of he said/she said and since no one stopped to be a witness, we each had to pay our own deductible. Since like all of us, I am a work in progress, I had a hard time working through my personal feelings of “it’s not fair” and why do I now have to go through presenting my case to the state insurance board, etc……, because I am refusing to just roll over and take the $720+ hit to my finances.

 

When this guy hit me, I immediately went into how if I hadn’t been on jury duty, I would not have been in the intersection making this turn at that time.  I would have been through that intersection at least one hour earlier.  Either he would have not have had an accident (because no one was in the lane), or he would have hit someone else. For me, jury duty was a sliding door. Not as big an impact as Gwyneth had in the movie, but a sliding door nonetheless.

 

 

What is interesting about the movie is the ending. They take her back to the version in which she didn’t catch her husband in their bed with another woman. However, in this version she is leaving him.  She caught him much later in the timeline having an affair. The final scene is with Gwyneth in the elevator.  In the elevator with her is the same man she had a relationship with in the other version.  Thus tying up the ending to mean that no matter whether she made the subway train or not, she was destined to be with this man.

 

So how much of destiny really occurs in our lives? Did my having a very minor accident with this man, which delayed me getting home about an hour change my destiny? Did the minor accident keep me from having a major accident further down the road? Was there a purpose to the accident, a meaning that I will get later in my life? This is one of my back shelf ideas or concepts. Back shelf ideas are things that I learn about and am curious about.  I am not yet sure if it constitutes a belief or not. Do your thoughts about things, become the architects of your destiny?

 

What is destiny really? How much does destiny or fate really play into our lives? How much does our desire to tie everything up into neat little bows, make us put fate or destiny as the causation of what happens to us? If destiny is true where does that put free will? Does that eliminate choice, and make it simply an illusion? 

 

 

Then there is the concept of Karma. Is Karma a destiny that you have consequences for, as actions that play out throughout your life?

 

 

I don’t have all of the answers. I think that all of them are right in some aspect though. I do believe in a core destiny, that we come to bring something to this world, or experience in this lifetime. I believe that we have free will and choices at every step of the way as we live our life.  We can choose to encompass that destiny or run away from it. I do believe in some sort of concept of karma, that our choices all have consequences, both intended and unintended.

 

 

I also believe that in each moment of our life, we have a new opportunity to make new choices.  We can always turn our ship around if it is off course.

 

 

The woman in the photo made the choice to climb up the cliff. Each moment she is making a new choice for a hand or foot hold to take her up to the next level. I think that we are all like this woman, choosing each moment to take ourselves to the next level. I would have chosen the rocky path on solid ground up to the mountain top.  I don’t think my heart could take climbing up the side of a cliff.

 

 

Each path was a different choice, but the same destination would be reached. Is one wrong or right, or does it matter? What do you think?

 

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