youthful misconceptions and a random world
There’s a saying here in Scotland, “What’s for you won’t go by you.” I expect there’s a similar way of expressing this sentiment in most countries and in most languages. We humans have a strong attraction to the notion that there is a plan or a pattern or a greater meaning to all the things that happen to us. And especially in times of hardship, pain and stress, the hope that there is a greater significance to the whole of the experience is often what people cling to in order to keep going.
Because of this, commonly held superstitions, formal religions and silly philosophical theories hold great appeal. If everyone says there’s a plan, then it must be true, mustn’t it? I can see how for those with an imaginary plan in the background, the notion that all life experiences happen for no reason other than chance is frightening, empty and perhaps rather depressing.
In the spirit of reality check, here are a few misconceptions I had as a teenager and young adult that it would have been nice to have been disabused of at an earlier stage in life.
1. There is no perfect romantic match or soul mate waiting to be discovered in a cloud of magic dust at the right moment in your life. There are many people with whom it’s possible to have long-term, fulfilling relationships (if you want that kind of thing) and getting together with any of them is a matter of meeting at an appropriate moment in your lives, your predisposition to adapt to each other and the strength of chemicals you fire off in each other. If you’re lucky enough to meet those criteria with anyone, staying together is likely to be a matter of luck, lack of other options and sheer determination.
2. There is no perfect career that you are born into with a naturally (or supernaturally) endowed dose of talent. There are probably a number of routes that will be more suited to your interests and abilities, but if you’re focused and determined enough, you are likely to be able to carve out a living in any field you choose.
3. There is no place you are or were ‘meant to be’ at a certain time in your life because something amazing happened. Coincidences and generally cool events can happen at any time and anywhere in your life. If what you view as the pivotal moments in your life hadn’t occurred for some reason or another, other pivotal moments would have rolled up in their place and life would have continued on its way. Ponder the myriad parallel universes you probably don’t exist in.
So, instead of ‘what’s for you won’t go by you’, I would suggest the rather unromantic version ‘nothing’s for you and lots of opportunities will go by you’. But don’t be glum, in this random universe anything may be round the corner.
I like it. I wish I had been disabused of many of the same notions as you. Plus a couple; like ‘it’s a woman’s joy and purpose in life to bear children’. I’ve been more than depressed on a few occasions at my inability to do so. And ‘a happy wife makes for a happy home’. Total bs, that one. ‘A woman’s virginity is the greatest gift she can give’. As if the total sum of what I am is wrapped up in my sexuality.
We have our sayings, too. ‘Everything happens for a reason’, ‘when one door closes another door opens’. There are more, I just can’t think of them at the moment. The thing that I’ve come to realize is, the opportunities that go by us we’ll probably never know about. You can’t miss what you can’t measure.
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Hmmm, think I might start lurking round Christian posts with advice for women. I agree there’s no point in worrying about things we might have missed, only if there’s something we want to do about it now.
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Do it at your own peril. Nothing good can come of this.
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Great car-parks, especially those found on rainy days, are not the revelation of simple chance.
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How Dragon takes care of us!
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Sh/h/it is wise and good. Just this morning she reached out across the vastness of space and presented me one of the cities very best car parks. So good, in fact, was this spot i thought about catching a taxi home later just so i could savour my gifted good fortune for a day or two.
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Isn’t it interesting that people seem to think that they can believe what they want to believe, rather than simply believing what is?
These same people have also convinced themselves that their fears are true, which I find especially interesting. They believe that life is meaningless if there is no God or if there is no “plan”… or just, if there isn’t something “bigger”. But do they truly live their day to day lives under this umbrella? I would say no, based on my experience anyways.
What I observe from these people is they are never walking around with a big smile on their face because when they die there is something more, or they aren’t walking around with a smile because there is something bigger, they have a smile on their face because of family, friends, great life experiences that are happening now, in this very moment. It is in our moment to moment and day to day lives where we actually find our happiness, not in the future wishes.
I think that these people (for some reason, I don’t understand) want to believe that they are smiling for the former reasons, but if they realized that they are actually smiling for the latter, their minds might be at ease.
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Absolutely! There is such a disconnect from what Christians say they believe and how they act. Until they make funerals a truly joyous occasion, we know they don’t believe a word they say …
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I think I was disabused of most of these at an early age.
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That’s because you’re a smarty pants! It took me a while to figure it all out … 🙂
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😛
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The ancient Greeks believed in Kismet, that would determine even the fates of gods.
I am a bit of a romantic, and to me the possibility of a chance happening any moment is both a terribly realistic and terribly romantic idea. Who knows what will happen next? It could be something wonderfull just as well as it could be something wonderfully terrible.
Fear makes people controll freaks. By naming the unknown, they strive to make it familiar, known and controlled. Gods and future are unknowables, but by naming the unknown cause as a god (rather a benevolent god, but an evil one will do also, if it can be pleased whith blood sacrifice – preferably one someone else has already performed ages ago), or unknown future as a fate, a person may think they have taken hold of the unknown. Reasoned and bargained whith it. By that collective self deception people really seem to be able to cope whith the fact they are not in controll of the unknown, or much of the chaos of the future. Religions and superstitions live on the fears of people, by offering false security.
In Finnish there is no original proverbs about fate (none that I can remember anyway). Much of how the Finns percieve fate is, that it might be the fate of a person to face harships, but the true persona is tested by the determination by which the fate is challenged. “To go through the grey rock” is what we say to describe how we percieve fate as a challenge. Determination despite the odds and what would seem like fate… Perhaps this relationship to fate has influenced how slowly and poorly the Finns have accumulated Christian ideals.
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Actually, you’re right, it’s much more romantic to believe in chance. I love the randomness of life and how it feels like it all fitted together (naturally, because it’s a sequence of events, duh!). People who plan their lives really confuse me though – career and family goals make no sense to me. Surely you’re limiting what might happen by planning what you see around you. I suppose the familiarity of the repetition of life events (birth,education, work, marriage, retirement, death) makes some people feel safe.
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Well put, Violet. Agenticity is what I’ve heard psychologists call this trait.
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Thanks, found a nice article on that:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/skeptic-agenticity/
Does it not worry you that your beliefs are lumped together with aliens and ghosts?
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😀 Well, in all honesty, I don’t lump them together, someone else lumps them together!
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Another snort award. This time snort of the morning as it is before noon, and it was for par 1). Mainly for the last sentence, and specifically lack of other options – too funny. I would also add into that not wanting to see your finances suddenly halve. And being too idle to take up other options. Or other options being extremely ugly etc etc
We tend to like ‘what goes around comes around’ (in regard to nasty people who have done bad things) and Ruth’s ‘when one door opens’. It’s a bit like ‘when your time’s up’. But really they all express the same essence. You take out of life what you can, accept what it throws at you, and keep going. Until the day you drop dead of course and float off to Paradise. Whereupon you meet the same shitheads you’d hoped to never ever bump into again.
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I’m seriously pleased I’m getting so many snorts! It’s almost as good as picture praise. Being idle to take up other options is a good one, as well as fear of change or just sheer laziness. One of the things about the notion of Heaven that always confused me was that spending eternity with anyone, never mind your family, could be viewed as a happy outcome (not that I don’t love my family, but eternity??)
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