On the Cruelty of Fate and its Solution
“[F]or dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” — KJV Genesis 3:19
“Why so much grief for me? No man will hurl me down to Death, against my fate. And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you — it’s born with us the day that we are born.” — Homer’s Iliad Book VI (579–584)
Man’s position in the world is tenuous. He is buttressed and battered by innumerable difficulties, trials and tribulations; that every person is a Hercules with far greater burdens than 12 Labors. He is conversely gifted with infinite creative possibilities like a god, with cognition and imagination to steer out the course of his life on the rough waves of a dark, foreboding ocean. But alas! Only God Eternal determines the course of his life, and hence, he is frustrated, impeded and restricted at every point in his life.
What does man control? Only his temperament and mentality. We may either succumb to our wounds like Schopenhauer did; or we may overcome them as Nelson Mandela did.
There is a beauty indescribable of the lonely hero (each and every one of us) encountering danger, enduring torment, and still choosing, yes choosing, to continue with a smile and an innocent heart, only yearning to do good and shine a light so bright that even the most cynical rogue gleans the infinite goodness of the world.
So play on, O marvelous creatures of the divine, and reach for that sublime summit which lies in the heart and mind of man.