Destiny vs. Determination

I was talking to withoutwriting about positivity and spirituality and interesting questions came up. The idea of success and positivity. Does spirituality hinder successful development? Is being religious a help or hindrance in creating the life we want? I have to say these questions have been on my mind recently when I was feeling a bit down in the dumps recently. You see for 98% of the world that believe in a spiritual entity most turn to him or her in times of crisis, myself included, hoping for guidance. However there have been times in the past few years where I have found myself questioning the very existence of a god. This is not something a good little boy should ever do.

I was raised in a very religious family and the belief in God was a given. It was a belief that was never challenged particularly in a small island. Everyone you knew had a belief system, whether they believed in your god or not. It was the belief in a god that united us and divided us. Religion and the church was something that was part of your life, like eating and breathing. You went to church and that was it. You could throw a "sicky" for school but never for church because "God was watching". They got you from the cradle so that to even think about not wanting to go to church was a sin. Religion and the belief in God was shoved down our throats, morning, noon and night. Every morning there were prays on the single television station in the island (we're talking the 70's and early 80's here) giving equal importance to the top three faiths in our country, The Christians, The Muslims and The Hindus. We were politically correct before anyone even knew what political correctness was.

So with my upbringing I never heard of an atheist until I was in my late teens. And that idea was like believing in the bogeyman. Ridiculous. People that didn't believe in God. Yeah, Right!! It was a concept so alien to me. How could someone even question whether there was a god?, I asked myself. Are they crazy? Am I? It was not a good place to be I felt sorry for these mysterious atheists. After all, I knew there is a god. Though I've never seen him. I knew there were miracles taking place everyday. Though I've never seen a miracle myself I've heard from lots of people who knew someone, who heard it from someone else, who knew the great aunt, twice removed of a god fearing, trust-worthy person who was lame and now healed when she saw an angel in the sky. What more evidence did I need? Now if that wasn't a miracle, what was it? A coincidence, synchronicity? You only think it was a coincidence or synchronicity because you don't believe. That's your problem. The lord works in mysterious ways and everything and everyone in my life reinforced this belief. I didn't get that top graded school I wanted but got something else. I was comforted by words like "It just wasn't meant to be. The lord have something better in mind for you."

Television was and still is heavily censored. No nudity, obscene language, and immoral situations so there were a lot of shows with blurred scenes of a sexual images, sudden bouts of silence (though I became very good at lipreading the curses) and huge cuts between scenes of an immoral nature. Of course who determines what is nudity, obscene and immoral are the pillars of morality themselves. The Inter religious Organisation. Strange though because if I looked out my windows I could see men's exposed penises as they boldly pissed up against a wall, I could hear them telling their friends to F**k off and read in the news papers about another religious figure who was caught with his pants down servicing one of his parishioners. AGAIN.  I just couldn't watch it on television.

So with a sheltered life, and bursting to the bits to find my own way I moved to the bright city lights of London. It was dark, cold, dismal, rainy, the air literally stank of cigarette smoke and my skin broke out. I LOVE IT. I was free. I could make my own way, carve a new direction in life for myself and turn over a new leaf. No one knew me and that was just the way I wanted it. I avoided my fellow countrymen like the plague. Most immigrants gravitate towards centres of the city where everyone was like them, in language, dress, culture and taste in food. They formed their little ghettos. And don't get me wrong. I get that. I totally understand why someone moving to a new country would want to be among people that they knew with  familiar sights and sounds. But I also knew that I wanted to assimulate as quickly as possible and I knew that hanging around people like me, telling the same old stories of the old country was not going to do me any favours. It's why some people have lived in England for 40 years and still don't know how to speak the language(What Now! EXCUSE YOU?) Even now so many years later I still only have one friend from my country and he's a handful ( D...You know I love you. :-)). But now with all these freedoms, new ideas kept coming into my mind. New ways of seeing the world. I actually began to meet people who were atheist and those who were agnostic (I had to look that one up). I felt as if they had killed God. To even talk about God was seen as shameful as if you were afflicted with a mental ailment. I wasn't hip or facing reality. My world was being turned on it's head. I could have just shut down and called them philistines but I realised that part led to unthinking blind devotion. And I think we all know where unthinking blind devotion to a god leads.

So over the years I've found myself facing challenges and seemingly insurmountable obstacles. It is then that I have to find an inner strength within me to keep on going. Do i fall back on my tried (but unfounded) belief that it was meant to be, or do i embrace this new idea of determination. The idea that i am the captain of my own life. I had to challenge the very idea that I'm not getting the job I want because "It's up to God or that's just the way it is." I am constantly fighting within myself to overcome the whole idea that my life is predetermined and no matter how hard I try I will never amount to more than what i am predestined to be. I am getting angrier and angrier about it and one day i snapped. NO. HELL to the N to the O. NO. I will not lay down and accept this as my life. I can be better. I am deserving of achieving all my dreams and goals. I will never let anyone or being tell me who I can and cannot be. FREE WILL BABY!! Whether I succeed or fail it has to be my decision, a consequence of my choice.

It would be naive and too simplistic of me to say that a belief in a supernatural being is the reason so many people in the world live and and never attain their dreams but comfort themselves by saying "That's the way it is. It's God's Will." I don't think it is God's will. If a god was even remotely interested in your life, why would he or she want you to be Mr and Mrs Average. Why, if you believe you were created in His images would he want to be a slob vegetating on a couch in front of a television. No, you would be the best there is to be. You would grow constantly and become a shining example in your life and not be ants in an anthill. It's no big secret that throughout human history the idea of god and religion have been hijacked by the powerful to keep those less powerful in their place and from aspiring to be anything other that living off the scraps that fall from the powerful tables. The Opium of the masses, I believe Karl Marx called it. My friend put across the point that society has changed, revolutions that created a more just society and that we are more caring, rulers and leaders are not like the dark ages. No it's not. they rulers are just smarter. They don't always get it right. There are still protests but they don't worry much. After all once you control the mind you don't have to worry about that the body does. And they do control the mind, via propaganda, television and religion.

Do a quick search of all the powerful people(leaders, innovators) the people whose very word and ideas can affect your life. Find out how they got there and see how many of them actually have a belief in a supernatural being. I refer to leaders in the Western world because there are country in the east where religion and beief in gods are not encouraged yet their populations do not strive. This coud be because those same country do not allow individual expression of thought or grant it's citizens the educational oppportunities to grow. Still I do not know all the answers. What I do know is that for me I am still struggling with the idea of how to balance destiny vs determination. I may be a stubborn bastard but like the other 98% of the world's popultaion I rather be a believer than not.