Can you see that you push myths out in front of you and then you seek to fulfill them? For instance, when you do something you later don’t agree with because you’ve had more time to recognize the results, you’ll possibly view your actions as egotistical, whereas if Freud had never defined an ego then you couldn’t really be egotistical could you? You look in your life for what you have been taught to see. Regardless of what you find it’s all just different ways of being. But you don’t exist if you don’t have a narrative to allow yourself into other people’s imaginations. And because we share in the myth of ego you can present yourself to me in that form and I too will be able to recognize and judge your actions as egotistical. Because you have to be someone. Our mind demands that we wrap our experiences in stories. Things we don’t have a story for we’ll say we’ve forgotten. Every story lays over the action of life but it is not the action itself. Likewise with a quote like the one above. We might choose to believe in the myth that everything has a reason because we need some level of order to be able to feel comfortable in the world. But that reasoning is applied after the fact. We don’t understand what’s happened in front of us in an original, predictive way. Rather we can understand our pasts according to the myths we believe in. So for example, if you believe in the myth that someone is dishonest then you will tend not to believe what they have said whereas if their myth is honesty you will tend to believe what they have said. Neither are true, they are just myths you sought to fulfill. So no, there is no destiny or meaning other than that your choices will have consequences. But you can always change your choices and you can always change where you end up. But there is no meaning to any of it other than the meaning you choose to apply. That’s what the little boy on the boat in Life of Pi was trying to say. There is no universal meaning that works on all of us. We all interpret things the way we choose, and so anything you feel is the result of destiny is really just what happened with a story over top that says it was supposed to happen. But that story is always by you and for you. You can tell that because if it doesn’t come true you’ll keep waiting for it to. You’ll surrender other opportunities if you believe you’re supposed to be with someone. You might even die waiting for them to be available and you will die with your story of destiny intact. Go ahead. Have your myths. Just make sure you see them as myths. Life is life. Your analysis of that life is the story you tell yourself of your existence. The quality of that story will create the quality of your life.
peace. s
A serious childhood brain injury lead Scott to spend his entire life meditating on the concepts of thought, consciousness, reality and identity. It made others as strange to him as he was to them. When he realized people were confused by their own over-thinking, Scott began teaching others to understand reality. He is currently CBC Radio Active’s Wellness Columnist, as well as a writer, speaker and mindfulness instructor based in Edmonton, AB where he still finds it strange to write about himself in the third person.