Is life fixed or free will
By orchestration, do I mean Kismet?
When I look back at my college days, as I did when I was writing my resume for Immigration, it's like much of my life was orchestrated then and there when I was in college. I can understand now how there are no accidents. In some things I can see that.
International has been and is a theme in my life.
The college I went to had international in the middle of its name. At the time I went to college, not so many colleges offered such great selections of world literature that my college did. Most colleges at the time seemed to focus on English and American literature courses.
I did not consciously choose this college for any reason except I was going to live at home and this college was there, yet I went to the right college for me.
While I was still a student, I was hand-picked for a special remarkable administrative assistant job which was right up my alley working with international students. The personnel department at the college thought of me, called me in and sent me on the only interview, and I was hired on the spot.The job was available because the person who had it ahead of me for only a short time did not work out.
This foreign student program was a government program under the auspices of the Foreign Operations Aministration (FOA.)
This was a miracle job. I worked with about 25 young tradesmen from twelve different countries. Italy, Germany, Austria, Holland, Belgium, France, Trieste, Denmark, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg -- maybe it was eleven countries. They worked at their trade part-time.
We went on field trips to the United Nations, to U.S. Presidents' homes, Niagara Falls, to Massachusetts state government etc. Travel began at this time.
By an impossible fluke, I, still a student at the college, taught English to these young men! The college teacher who was doing it thought you had to make people learn and the students were not happy. Therefore, it fell to me. And what fun we had!
Newsletters back then and through all my future years of teaching have played an important part in my life. The name of the foreign student newsletter was The Link! This newsletter was meant to connect us all. The whole government program was to bring nations together and cement good will. Well, what do Heavenletters™ do but the same, only more so?
Part of this job was helping the students in a personal way. I would help them shop for gifts for their wives or girlfriends. I would arrange parties and other events. There was a lot of heart in this job.
In my life, I have mostly had good fortune. For the most part, but with exceptions, I have fallen into what could be called gravy. Because this was a government position and the government set the salary and reimbursed the college, I was the highest paid secretary at the college! I was paid a lot more than the college President's secretary! Furthermore, because I was employed by the college, I got free tuition!
When I graduated and the job was over, I went to visit the students in their countries. I was in Europe for three months. Yes, travel was in the picture. And international, teaching, newsletters, and heart as well.
Are our whole lives serendipity? Certainly there is more than capricious luck at play. How much of our lives are destiny, and how much is free will? I'm veering more and more to destiny. Does destiny mean the same as in God's hands?
Comments
I think, dear Gloria, that the "theme" of your blog is very "musical" in nature.
In music, particularly the "classical" one, composers loved to take a theme (an original one or a "borrowed one") and created variations on the theme. Let's think of Chopin. Liszt, Bach who were so inspired by "folk" themes that were the rhapsodies, waltz, dances, etc.
Destiny might be the theme of your life/lives and variations on the theme spring from your free will...
I love this comparison to music. Love it. It's rich, Normand.
Thinking more about what you said, I wonder if my recognition of the themes in my life is an example of free will -- or is it?!!!
This is the "hen or egg first?" type of question. Perhaps could we simplify it by saying that everything that pertains to the tentative, experimental, formal, temporary is free will. What we are pertains to timelessness, spacelessness, formelessness.
Learning is also temporary, it comes automatically with free will because free will doesn't know anything. So it has to learn. And what does it have to learn? It has to learn what we are in Truth. And what we are does not require any learning.
In the end, we learn to forget about learning.
Normand, thank you for this: "In the end we learn to forget about learning."
All does seem to become more and more about Being, doesn't it? Giving thanks for Heavenletters, Gloria, and Heavenreaders all.
Ah, yes, in the end. Meanwhile, however, we learn and learn, and this equates as growing, and grow we must.
If I could live my life over, knowing what I know now, being much wiser than I was, I would have progressed so much faster, been happier etc. I'm, of course, speaking about learning about life, and not erudition. Oh, yes, how I would do things differently. How different I would have been. How much pain I would be spared, and spared others too.
Learning may not be everything, but it is sure something!
learning=unlearning, too, quite an amazing process!