“I ain’t played the cards I was dealt, I changed my cards. I prayed to the skies and I changed my stars”~Kanye West, Last Call
I used to think me and my first love were destined to be together. Because for 11 years we lived 1 block away from each other. For 10 years, we attended the same church where we unknowingly checked each other out. For 8 years, he was friends with my cousin who I lived with. And for 6 years, we slept over the same neighborhood baby-sitters house but never ran into each other.
It wasn’t until that 11th year that we finally met. We didn’t hit it off right away. Matter of fact, we stopped talking for about a month. Until one day, I saw a Pizza Hut commercial about bread sticks that reminded me of him and I called him up. The rest as they say, is history.
I used to think that there was a reason we didn’t meet until that 11th year. That had we met earlier, we would’nt have lasted as long as we did. But then that would that mean it was predetermined for that Pizza Hut commercial to air when it did and that ultimately, bread sticks were responsible for the next 10 years of my love life?
I highly doubt it.
But movies like Only You and books like The Celestine Prophecy have us pondering about coincidences that are too much of a coincidence to be JUST a coincidence. Some people believe everything happens for a reason. Some people create their own destiny. Yet others say fate takes you to a certain extent and then it is up to you what you want to happen from there.
What do I believe? I believe that “What you see is what you get, for every cause there’s an effect.” Our current state is a direct result of the decisions we’ve made earlier in our lives, whether it was made years, months, days, or even minutes ago. And that ultimately, shit just happens! Maybe I’m jaded, but I truly believe that everything I have (and don’t have) right now, I have because I WORKED HARD (or didn’t work hard enough) for it. It doesn’t have to be so complicated. A person pushes a fly whip ‘cuz they saved up the funds, orrrrr their parents are rich. Either way, unless a comet named Mercedes CL550 landed on someone’s old Civic right after they inherited money and just as they were trying to figure out what kinda new car to get – the cosmos had nothing to do with it.
It’s not being cynical, it’s being realistic. I love Serendipity type endings, but while you’re sitting there looking at the stars, waiting for them to align, you might miss the one right in front of your face. You can sit there and wait for shit to happen, or you can make shit happen. It’s like that Abraham Lincoln quote, “Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.” If fate and karma and all that other woompty-woomp are for real? Well, then it must be my destiny to hustle. And if not, at least I’ll be doing something productive while waiting for fate to take place.