Destiny is Overrated
Life Lessons From Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Episode 1: Welcome to the Hellmouth.
When I was a kid I wanted to be an inventor when I grew up. My teacher told me “that doesn’t make any money”, which I found strange because Timmy next to me wanted to be a fire engine when he grew up and that seemed to be just fine with her.
Perhaps I overcompensated. While not entirely motivated by the confused statements of my third grade teacher, her voice did haunt me as I made my way through high school and college. I went into engineering and eventually into product management, and now I can look back and see my life as a pretty satisfactory fulfillment of my prepubescent fantasy.
Destiny is a romantic term for the obvious. My story may sound like evidence of clairvoyance, but logically “inventor” was the closest term to describe the most obvious outcome for a boy born of an astrophysicist and a tap dancer who was excelling at math. If I had known what an engineer was or a product manager, I probably would have said one of those instead of inventor.
I can’t count how many years, especially in my late teens and early twenties, I spent in angst worrying over my direction, my place in the world, and my ability to fulfill my potential. I thought that if only I had known my destiny, I could stop worrying and focus on enjoying life without the ominous black hole of uncertainty swallowing my future in my mind.
Had I been more astute, more self-aware, I would have understood that I had already known my destiny in my heart of hearts when I was eight years old. I believe my ignorance of the obvious was normal. In our younger years we lack the experience to see that life is simpler than we want to believe. Our futures are easily predicted and it is only because of a common homage to the ideal of a future full of opportunities that we want every child to be entitled to, that we refrain from spelling out the obvious result of the inevitable failure to change their lot in life.
Buffy the vampire slayer discovered her destiny as the chosen one in her sophomore year of high school. However, instead of glorifying it (like Giles), or avoiding it (like her classmates), she recognized it and clinically assessed it.
For all the nobility and grandeur that comes with being a “chosen one”, Buffy recognized her destiny was to slay and eventually be slain. And, while hers seems to be more clear cut than the average tax accountant, or inventor, the principal is the same: what is the thing you will do until you die?
Oh, come on, stake through the heart, a little sunlight... It’s like falling off a log. -Buffy
Her blasé attitude makes her appear flippant towards the magnitude of her destiny. But, it is rather due to a deep appreciation and the simplicity of it all.
Life is simple, we fulfill the role that we were meant to play and we try to enjoy what we can along the way. Buffy’s appreciation for the consequences of embracing her destiny highlights how much denial the people around her possess towards their own destiny. Giles, Willow, Xander, and Coredelia are all ignoring their destiny, allowing them to fantasize about the mystique and importance that such a thing would allow.
Buffy catches Giles in the trap of denial when she explains very clearly that she knows what her destiny is and why she prefers to ignore it.
Giles: A watcher prepares the Slayer…
Buffy: Prepares me for what? For getting kicked out of school? For losing all of my friends? For having to spend all of my time fighting for my life and never getting to tell anyone because I might endanger them? Go ahead! Prepare me.
Each of Buffy’s peers draw on the illusion of opportunities in the future to create a false hope for themselves that allows them to create an identity which is ultimately based on fear. Cordelia is able to maintain her bubble of self importance by ignoring her destiny of becoming a trophy wife, Xander is able to maintain his aire of carefree living by ignoring his destiny of becoming an uneducated blue-collar worker, and Willow is able to maintain her bubbly disposition towards all people by ignoring her destiny as a reclusive college professor.
But Buffy can genuinely appreciate the joys of frivolity by recognizing that her destiny is neither mysterious, nor interesting.
