On fate

If you know me, you'll know how I credit Napoleon Hill for the great change in my life that came about in 2006. Napoleon Hill wrote "motivational" material of the kind we commonly associate with self-help books. Throughout the years since, I've read a lot of material from Napoleon Hill and other similar writers, including Tony Robbins.

Back in 2006 I was in a bit of a dark hole, emotionally and spiritually. I took a year off medical school to sort myself out. To re-evaluate not only if I wanted to finish my course, but also if my total existence was worthy of effort. I didn't feel hard-done by the world; I just had allowed myself to exist without a known cause to justify my existence. Now, not many people will go through these "existential crises" because we are either in good environments with supportive people, or we have external passions, or quite simply questioning your reason for existence is just not something that would capture our attention at all given all the other tasks of life. I, however, like to question everything. So I started questioning and I just couldn't identify many reasons why I should continue to be alive. I at that stage wasn't suicidal, no, that's not what I mean. I did however "wish" for an alternative to my current life. I wished for disease, for sudden death, for a road accident, for natural disasters, etc. But it wasn't all negative, I also wished for "love", for money even, for artistic success, for a child, for anything that would take me out of my then empty life to elsewhere. I wanted anything, good or bad - as long as it came to me and I didn't have to do anything to get it. I believed that fate had brought me to this slump, but that it would equally bail me out. It was then I started reading Napoleon Hill's work and realized that all these things, these "good" things that happened to some “lucky” people (unlike myself) didn't just happen due to fate.

Napoleon Hill tells a story at the start of the book 'Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude' about a poor family in which the child asks his mother why his family is poor. The child is pondering his own “fate” to grow up and become a poor man himself like every other member of his family. Now, the obvious response seems at first to be 'we're poor because our parents were poor like their parents before them, etc.' Or ‘we’re poor because we can’t afford the type of education others can’. Or ‘we’re poor because we are of this race, or culture, or religion, etc’. However, is it an unchangeable fate that some families or some people are born either poor or successful? The mother explains "We are poor, not because of God. We are poor because... no-one in our family has ever developed a desire to be anything else”. Now that seems like a simple statement, but if you consider that the family in question was an African-American family, not too many generations removed from slavery and oppression, and that the child that asked the question became a very wealthy businessman, you can begin to understand the paralysing effect our belief in fate can bring.

In relationships many of us believe that fate will bring us the “right” man or woman. And not only that, we also believe that fate will determine the length or strength of that relationship. Fate will decide if we have children or not. Fate will decide if we have a “good” or a “bad” partner and whether we ourselves are good or bad. So no longer are we in control of the relationship, or of our role in it, but this external entity we call fate is. Why try, then, if it is all up to fate? The other comfortable position we can adopt is to say we are simply bad at relationships. And we may well have reasons to be bad at relationships; maybe we didn’t have the best role models, maybe we have low self-esteem due to any number of things, maybe we had a prejudicial childhood or subject to trauma somewhere in our past. All these things shape us, of course, but insight is often the first key to unlock us from this uncontrollable thing called fate. However, you can unlock a person from slavery, from trauma, and then it is up to the person to walk out of his/her cell. As a result of all the abuse and trauma maybe the person is initially too weak to walk through the door alone, but how long should we keep using that excuse? After a week? A month? A year? Ten years? The rest of our lives? It’s really up to the individual person, isn’t it? We may not have been responsible for our pasts but we are in control to shape our futures. Things don’t always just happen to us, some things we can make happen too. Acknowledging that is isn’t accepting blame for our pasts; it is accepting the challenge to steer our own future.

Similarly in our careers or vocational aspirations. Too often I hear people tell me that they wish they could do that job but they’re doing this other one because not many people get to do that job. But somebody will get those jobs, right? Why can’t that somebody be you? People will then proceed to tell you excuses (aka “reasons”) why they believe it can’t be them. They need more education, those jobs are for people who know other people, you need money to get into that field, you would need to relocate elsewhere, etc. So? The great thing about these “reasons” are that perhaps you in fact need to see them as steps rather than excuses. So if you have to know someone, why not get yourself known to someone? If you need more education, why not apply for a further education course? See, yet it is so easy to say that fate would have it that you don’t (yet) know the right people, you don’t (yet) have the money, etc. We become victims of our fate and also of our past – and that is how we remain stagnant. We may in time come to blame fate for the job we don’t have, the money we don’t earn, the associates we can’t exactly call friends. It is easy to blame an external entity – but we don’t have to be victims of any past or future if we take responsibility for our role in our own lives.

The last thing I want to consider is our great fear of control, or what is more commonly called accountability. I know, I know, we think we all want control, right? Everyone wants control, but no-one wants to be held accountable for their actions. So we hesitate to dream, to aspire to anything, to want or demand change. We would rather place our faith in this mystical thing called fate. ‘If fate will have it, I will have a good marriage. If fate will have it, I will enjoy this new job. If fate will have it, I will be financially successful in my career...’ People look to horoscopes to fuel their faith. If a thing I want is suggested by my horoscope, then it is okay to want it. If my horoscope says I am not to have something, then I am bound to have this fate happen to me. Now, you may have heard of this thing called self-fulfilling prophecies. I speak of it in terms of horoscopes because it is the most obvious example. Often a horoscope will tell you a general bit of information that describes you – ok, you agree with it (e.g. “oh yes, I am calm like other virgos). Then it tells you something vague but positive about what will happen to you – and you can always identify at least one instance of this happening. For example, ‘you will meet a handsome stranger’ can mean that guy that looked at you on the bus. You were alert to this and so you see your destiny being fulfilled. Had you not been alerted to the fact you may not even have noticed anyone on the bus even if he was very overtly trying to capture your attention. Similarly, it may be with career success, financial wealth, etc. It is like we are free to allow good things to happen to us – or god forbid and we actually act in order to have good things happen to us – only if we are devoid of the accountability for our futures. Accountability becomes a thing to shun not only in regard to negative consequences, but also in potentially positive ones. No one wants to say they tried and did not succeed at this instance. It is so much easier to say that it was our fate to fail.