What do resilience, insightful strength against manipulation, relationship intelligence, a healthy perspective on entitlement, personal agency, and non-dogmatic meaning have in common?
Well, they are all examples of the reach and roles phenomenal forces such as Destiny, fate, and luck command when it comes to the stages of our lives. My article is here to serve to invite a better understanding of Destiny and fate. No one knows in advance whether we will get fortunate or especially destined, let alone chosen in life. Or if bad luck or tragic fate will find us. Or both. Or none at all. That we can really only try to figure out by checking our rear-view mirrors, which tend to be misted over with our psychological biases and our religious conditioning too.
It takes an unclouded mind to get past the many truth-bending traps of looking back
This article is not a manual on how to divine your options. It is not pushing the Tinkerbell Effect. It is not a list of shortcuts on how to trick the great thread. There are no Destiny “hacks”, I’m afraid. No luck magnets either. No easy routes all the way to the bank, other than being born rich or stumbling onto good luck, which is a main ingredient of any great success anyway. Ask Warren Buffett or Elon Musk. And, anyway, while we are briefly mentioning divination, there are far too few proper oracles around these days willing to step forward and upset the apple cart. Yet. That’s also why I’ve covered divination, the ability to see the future due to a special connection with Destiny, in my book (chapter, page, and link).
So, why should we bother uncovering all there is to know about this legendary phenomenon of Destiny?
Because the more we know about the concept(s) of Destiny, the more we understand ourselves and our place in the universe. And that puts us in a much better position to deal with our personal and collective opportunities and challenges.
When love won’t add up
After a whirlwind meet-cute, the chemistry is undeniable. Sadly, the maths of common sense just won’t add up. Wrong city, wrong timing, wrong stage of life. And worse, too many promises too quickly, and then there’s that pandering of instant soulmateship at the will of fate buzzing your well-polished antennae. Caveat emptor!
Destined love cannot be evoked. It cannot be conjured up. It can only be experienced. Rarely.
Ancient philosophy and concepts have mirrored this exact mix of potential and issue for centuries, and not one of them concludes with a reductive “follow your heart.” If you read them properly. Because life isn’t a literary trope or a romcom, no matter how much some want us to believe that so we go out and buy their ideas and products. However, attacks of biochemically induced desire and neuron-fired emotions may stop you from analyzing the beckoning bond for what it actually is. Which likely isn’t what you and your infatuation wish it to be. And highly likely not been sent by Destiny. So better stop yourself in what you believe to be amorous tracks to eternal bliss and use some healthy deducing before you go all in. Whatever turns out to be useful can turn painful too. But better a little sad than big time sorry, right?
A flattening setback
A job is lost. A relationship turns over a new leaf against your will. A diagnosis hits you on a random morning. Big stings, all of them. The Stoics worked all this out long before modern psychology caught up. Even a moderate dose of understanding that not everything is yours to control will aid your recovery. Which isn’t giving up, by the way. And it certainly isn’t fatalism. Call it wisdom that you can put to work without converting to anything. Realistic assessments, plus a rapid kind of acceptance, can prepare you for a pragmatic resurgence.
The whole thinking process helps us to focus on what we can actually control and do something about. And it helps us not cling to the past, using the present day to shape tomorrow instead. I know this scenario inside out. Years ago, a car accident and severe iatrogenic consequences rendered me 100% disabled and unfit to ever work in the music industry, or anywhere, really, ever again. I learned to deal with loss and injustice and to make use of what was still there, rather than clinging to what was gone and could not be gotten back. I see my life as an anthology of parables. To me, Destiny is not a guaranteed plot. So I evolved, living my next story. And then some. More on that another time.
Claims of Destiny’s or God’s plan
Maybe your special case is family, maybe she’s a colleague, or maybe that charismatic business or national leader, or one of those garden-variety demagogues. Understanding why humans just cannot lay claim to being chosen by Destiny can help you seeing through their schemes. Get the backstory of how providence got turned into “God’s plan” and how it differs from karma, kismet, and pure determinism allows you informed conversations rather than shrugging your shoulders or just walking out. Cultural literacy doesn’t mean agreement. Not whatsoever. Knowing your stuff means you stop being outflanked, and you can address factuality without losing the room you’re standing in.
The “you create your reality” industry, where the universe conspires to serve your every whim and need, borrows heavily from a lord-of-the-manor model of top-down favors, freely dispensed and mostly undeserved, as if the universe was another man-made deity. Then they strip both history and nuance for a quicker sale. A beckoning universe is a far better product than our authentic cosmic actuality, of course. But if you know what the originals actually said about agency, fortune, and the limits of human will, and a bit of science wouldn’t hurt either, you’ll spot the spin the moment it raises its hand. Marketing doesn’t really work on a switched-on audience. Be that audience.
Boon and doom
You land that big on-top-of-the-world deal. You’re flying. Or you lose so badly that it feels as if you may never recover. You’re sinking. Both experiences can derail you. Especially when vainglory was involved. We see it playing out for thousands of years on the stages of history. And we come across it in our own circles, smaller in size yet not necessarily milder in effect. The Greeks called it hubris, and they built an entire mythological paradigm around what happens when humans forget the role of fairness. Honesty and probity go next. And that creates a spiral that, sooner or later, invites doom. Because no one is exempt, no matter how thick they cover themselves in gilded lilies. Avoiding any tête-à-tête with Destiny’s double-O agent Nemesis and her team is a reasonable insurance policy against believing your own publicity. And not bad comfort when the publicity turns either.
Don’t forget: hubris never ends well for anyone. No prisoners taken. Just wait and watch.
That first chapter
Growing up with genuinely benevolent caregivers is one of the best forms of fortune we can receive. Yet the opposite can also be true. Take a troubled childhood, an absent parent or a confabulating one, a family running on consistent conflict and the avoidance of truth. All of that weighs heavy but it is also a version of luck of a tougher kind. Yes, you can come to terms with the fact that such parent's own early wounds led to their missing empathy and lack of responsibility. Dressing it up with excuses or even diagnoses can be a useful tactic to detach from your youth, for sure. Will that kind of rationalization wholly remove those early scars though?
My youth made me hyper-vigilant, skeptical, self-sufficient and reality-bound. They said I was a coolly observing kid. I grew myself some nice dragon skin and a large reserve of grit that enabled me to survive and walk on unfettered and without bitterness. Thus I’m still in the position to help family members despite that difficult past. Why? Because I can.
Knowing your way around the long cross-cultural conversation on fortune and what philosophers like John Rawls and Thomas Nagel have called the lottery of birth lets you look at your own life clear-eyed. You, too, can learn to hand out a clean no, and decline to keep playing ball with the wrong set, while focusing on your path. And on supporting decent people. Those calm refusals, plus the fallout they bring, sharpen our silent instincts. The ones that, looking back years later, may sometimes read uncannily like Destiny.
A hard later-in-life look in the mirror
At some point most of us pause and ask whether the life we are living, or the familial or romantic relationships we are in, are perchance situations we were born into, drifted into, and were too complacent or exhausted to stop or leave. Impulsive acts are rarely parts of our destinies. And if doing a runner comes into mind, that’s mostly not the best and by far not the responsible way to find yourself in more desirable circumstances. Personally, I am for sticking things out until the way ahead becomes clearer and bearable solutions become available to all concerned.
And then there is our impending physical, even mental decline and, ultimately, death. But is dying our ultimate fate, or is it part of our dynamic Destiny? Such questions are older than recorded or conceptualized thought. Fortunately, we have thousands of years of cross-cultural wisdom on how to approach them without either burning everything down or pretending the question never came up. Knowing your way around the concepts of Destiny gives you the chance, and the vocabulary, for that chat with yourself. The one most people never get.
None of this “knowing” turns us into oracles. And it won’t keep bad luck from finding us either. But it does clear the fog from those rear-view mirrors a little, and it sharpens those silent instincts we possess but use far too rarely. It gives us better questions for whatever comes next. And it doesn’t really matter whether the impending stepping stone has been drawn on an invisible map by an unseen power, or whether we are living the consequences of our own causal choices. Or both. Whichever way, evaluating our situations in the bright light of historic and spiritual knowledge alongside a sharpened perception should always be given a shot.
And if any of these examples landed, you’ll find a much deeper conversation in The Destiny Book.
By Helena Lind┃Independent thinker and author of The Destiny Book : Rediscovering the Mother of Spirituality (History and Mystery of the All-Connecting Cosmic Thread), Identity Publications, 2024. My work draws on decades of comparative study across mythological, philosophical, and theological traditions, informed by lifelong personal experience and bilingual research into Destiny's cross-cultural presence.
For the full backstory, mythology, and philosophy of Destiny, please see The Destiny Book: Rediscovering the Mother of Spirituality (History and Mystery of the All-Connecting Cosmic Thread) by Helena Lind invites readers on a journey across Destiny's mythical beginnings to today’s enduring significance as a major guiding force. The Destiny Book offers an engaging history of humanity’s relationship with the wellspring of international spirituality.
This article is part of the Destinosophy Features by Helena Lind.
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