Destiny and Will

It was one Friday evening, a Christmas eve, when I was in my X Std in Kannur Municipal High School, staying with my advocate uncle that I had an unusually strong urge to go home to my mother’s place about ten kilometers away. Those days one had to go by train to cover this much distance, crossing a broad river in between. Normally I used to go for week end visits on Saturdays in the mornings. This time I somehow managed to get permission from my uncle and left on Friday itself by the evening train. Sometime after midnight that same night my mother passed away in child birth. My elder brother staying with my father’s brother in Kannur also felt the same way and had reached my mother the very same evening to see her before her death. Even now I am unable to reconcile the coincidences. We were destined to see our mother before her death. Or was it her wish which worked? She was an unusually intelligent, alertly conscious woman with lots of faith. The trauma of her death lasted days and months for me making me depressed, insecure, and miserable with a haunting fear twisting in the pit of my stomach. It was all fate, people said. Time and getting absorbed in engagements slowly cured the depression. The question of fate and destiny lurked and remained.
It has always been a paradoxical question; if I am living as predestined, where is the place for my free will? Will has then no meaning at all. Could it be that I am even thinking only what I should by what is preordained? I know that I have the awareness that I am aware. Animals are ignorant that they are aware and go through life mechanically, or instinctively. Man also lives instinctively, perhaps, most of the time, but with awareness and self-consciousness. But like an animal, man also lives and dies without knowing why he is doing so. The secret behind existence is not revealed to him. If the secret is known to everybody, perhaps the charm of life would be lost, or all human beings might feel silly and refuse to go on living. A scheme in which ignorance is clearly perpetuated seems to be in force, and perhaps even the awareness of his consciousness allowed to him is part of a trick to keep him wondering what it is all about!
But can’t the boundaries of the self be expanded beyond the limitations? That may be possible for a few, as it would seem. Otherwise how can there be so many masters in the spiritual world? Why should they alone be allowed to have a glimpse of the secret? ‘Boundaries of the self exceed the measurable universe’, says DR. Brian Weiss. May be true: Has to be true.
It would appear that actually destiny, like time, is a flowing river at its own speed. Human will can either synchronize with it and wade along or fight its way in the river. But there is no point in complaining about the ways of the flow. Within the limitations of destiny, Will can play its part. But we are predestined to flow along the river. Swim smoothly along with the river flow without tension.