The Other Destiny Deserter
Destiny, by definition, is written and determines what happens with our lives. As if it were a religion, the little margin that we count with is limited to believe or not in this idea. We look at it in a relative or absolute way, it gives the whole impression that this issue deserves a bit of our attention, at least for a few minutes.
We lived in a humid city, at that time rounded by a sharp winter that seemed to achieve its goal of becoming eternal. Everything was giving the impression of drawing itself in shades of white, on a background that was always black. We walked in silence, with our heads down, hidden under the necks of our coats (“gamulanes”), and with hands in our pockets, more because of the resignation that we carried inside, in our chest, than because of the cold. As we always did, we stopped to reflect on the bridge, from where the thick fog wasn’t allowing us to see the river. We talked about the present, about the future. But above all, we dedicate ourselves to regret what had been prepared for us.
Destiny? What destiny?
The award-winning anthropologist and humanist Ivana Arsán doesn’t hesitate to distrust the idea of destiny, defining it together with a chance as “the simple philosophical and even existentialist explanations of the future”. The shared category doesn’t keep her from defining destiny and a chance as “twinned opposites, the two sides of the same coin: the coin of the future”. They both represent “the impossibility of the human being to tolerate the uncertainty”. In this way, “destiny creates in the mind of each human being the idea of security and acts as a guide or inexorable, indisputable and supra-human path”. Just before finishing his suspicious cigar and even without asking her, Arsán goes back to the subject of the chance and without hesitation holds the theory that even this one is based on a logic; the one that we do not know, that hasn’t been discovered due to its inherent complexity. At this point, Arsán unawarely agrees with the legendary Doctor Engineer Sanguinetti, the author of the famous Formula of Success, who states with a tone that we could define scary that “chance is not really that hazardous”.
Life had played tricks on us and the writing for us was far from our dreams, always expendable, always postponed. What serious sin had we committed, perhaps in some past existence, to be deserve this unhappy passage that had a taste of punishment? We wouldn’t tolerate another minute carrying the crosses of others, or other pasts, or other desires that were not ours.
The renowned and harsh contemporary philosopher Germano Don Caldani, who usually receives us in shabby bar, is in the same line of thoughts as Arsán and Sanguinetti. To find him there is also a part of destiny, part of the future that we can predict. A drink on rocks adorns his right hand, where his gaze will be resting throughout the talk, during which he will provide us of his always juicy definitions. When questioned about fate, he replies almost upset: “I don’t believe in destiny and I do not rely on anything to sustain it. Believing or not is a decision and not believing it seems less comfortable, less sad. I strongly dislike the idea that something superior dictates the paths through which my life will pass. It’s true, there are believers in these easy ideas, which makes life more bearable and frees us from the responsibility for what we are going to do. And even more important, about what we are going to be”. Perhaps affected by his gambling addiction, he adds some probabilistic definitions: “However, I do believe in the existence of an order of all things just like in an the old saying: chaos is an order to be discovered. The reality is that any situation could be predicted if we had enough information. “
My aging companion, childhood friend, finally had the courage to propose the inescapable, what we already knew in the depths of our hearts. Looking in direction where the horizon would be, he announced that he would defect from fate. And with that, he pushed me to a transcendent crossroads, with no return, as it always happens when we are facing those who decide to be true to themselves. If it was true that I wanted to surrender to The Truth, this was the opportunity to do so. Would I leave my friend alone? Would it leave me alone?
¿What do you mean? The destiny exists
Destiny exists. And not only that: it is written irremediably. However, we are not condemned to follow its paragraphs literally, just like the theatre actor doesn’t have the obligation to follow the script, no matter how well written. It’s true that the actor doesn’t usually alter the letter of the script, but not because it’s not possible, but rather for the modesty. He follows the script, which he may not like, and then the piece ends without any excitements or surprises. This is how we end up when we enter a calm river (like the Swiss River Aar), and we surrender to it, letting it take us to its mouth, the point where it dies. This is fate: it’s letting ourselves be carried away, it is the act of not doing. It’s life by omission. And just like the actor knows how the piece will end, we can glimpse into our destiny if we project our present into the future. I can see my destiny with striking and painful clarity, not only in my overwhelmed mind, but everywhere, every day, with my own eyes.
We would desert the destiny. The heresy would be punished with harshness, in such an exemplary way that it would push the possibly inspired ones to rethink it twice. The eventual grief, however, would hardly be worse than the heavy chains established by Some Other. The paranoia of freedom is always preferable to the resignation of the prisoner. And to have the destiny behind, stalking us, is better than having it on top, resting its entire weight on us. My friend was known from that moment as The Deserter of Destiny.
The astrologer María Mercedes Herrera declares that “although from a strictly professional point of view I subscribe to the existence of the destiny, of course determined in the stars and decipherable thanks to my abilities, personally, I don’t have more details on the subject”. She notes, however, that “the discussion (and therefore this writing) is not important, since it is impossible to prove any of the theories. How can we know if the decision to listen to my opinion is the result of our freedom or the inexorable consequence of our destiny?”. What she can assure is that “it is the unsuccessful that tend to believe in destiny, to foist their own faults, while the successful ones tend to disbelieve it, to attribute themselves the merits, even when that is not the case”.
A few years would pass before The Destiny took care of locking up, irremediably, my old friend The Deserter. Perhaps his humanity was a lot more limited than his ambitions and, after all, it wasn’t possible to escape from something so definitive. In the disorder of our escape, we had separated since long time ago and I only heard it said that it was a closed night, misty, like the first one, when The Destiny put him in a narrow dead-end street. Once again, I had been left alone. The coldness is a sad quality that we, who live escaping, gain and it’s the one that allows us to overcome such painful losses as this one. The Destiny is now behind me, but I will not allow to be defeated. Nor to disappoint the few who still believe in me, to whom I owe. Those who, in an exaggerated way, call me The Other Deserter of Destiny.
Translation by Branka Milisic, branka123[at]yahoo.com
Original version (in spanish)
