I'm So Deep

Someone asked me the other day if I believed in fate and it got me thinking. Big surprise there. Me? Sitting on my deflated air mattress with my ridiculously oversized headphones thinking? No! Shocking! Anyway, moving on...I guess I do believe in fate. I mean, I think that there is a path that each of us follow through life and I picture it as kind of strands. There are all these strands flowing in the same general direction but then every so often they come together and then split apart again and it's the spots where they come together that are the bits that make me think of fate.

The thing is, I don't know if I believe that we are all predestined to live specific lives by some mysterious outside force. I mean, I don't know that we're not, but I'm just not entirely sure that we are. Or if that even matters. I wonder sometimes if this thing that we call fate isn't really something we do to ourselves. If I think back to all the things I've wanted over the course of my life, (and I mean real things, not the entire smurf village - mushroom houses and all that I've wanted that since I was 8 and man, I still do - that would be so cool - who wouldn't love a smurf village of their very own?) but the big things like career, travel, lifestyle and whatnot there seems to be a pattern. When I was in high school I wanted to be a designer. Then when I went to college I focused on english, writing and history for my first year. I had no desire to be a designer anymore, I wanted to be a teacher. Then I missed making art so I switched to fine arts. Which apparently I wasn't cut out for (who knew?) so I took another year off and the next year I entered the graphic design program. The only reason I even thought to apply was because the head of the department was a regular renter at the video store my boyfriend worked at and they somehow got to talking about me and voila. And that seems to me to be one of those places where all the strands came together. I could've followed that dream right out of high school but I chose what I thought was a very different direction and yet I ended up in the exact place I wanted to be without even knowing it. And all of the detours I took along the way made it better when I finally got there because I brought alot more to the experience than I could have before. And then I got my design degree and my web diploma and went to work as a designer and it wasn't really what I was looking for. So I fled the country and worked as an english teacher in Japan and it gelled again. I definitely do want to be a teacher. But being in Japan wasn't the right place or the right subject matter and it made me sad to realise what I wanted when I was in no position to get it but it seemed like a reasonable trade off for the life that Kohsuke and I were building. And then it all fell apart and I didn't know what I wanted to do anymore. And when I came back to Canada a lot of things just fell into place and now I feel like I'm back on track again. I know what I want now. The strands have met up again. So you see, is it fate? Or is it just that my subconscious decision making process is much more astute than my conscious one?

It's the same for relationships. There are some people in life that no matter how hard I try to push them away or change the dynamic between us, it always comes back full circle. I don't know if it's that there is a plan for us all and we have no say in it or if we somehow see something in other people that we recognise and need to have in our lives without really knowing it. I mean, sometimes it seems obvious when you meet someone and there's that instant spark and you just have to spend every minute you possibly can with that person because they're just so compelling but that's not what I'm talking about now. Those people are great but what I'm thinking of is the people who may not have come into your life with any fanfare or sparks or whatever but somehow end up being a part of the very foundation of who you are without you even realising it. Those people make me believe in fate. It's the strand thing again.

I don't know if any of this makes any sense and I'm not entirely convinced that it even matters but I have a lot of alone time these days and this is what comes of that. Well, that and alot of weird mixed cds and toenail painting. A girl's got to have variety in her recreation. And since I still don't have that smurf village I've been craving...we all have to compromise. :-)