Thomas Sullivan: FATE, DESTINY, SERENDIPITY, KARMA, KISMET AND STAR-CROSSED IRONIES & COINCIDENCES
As one control freak to another… Uh-oh, way to go, Sully. You’ve alienated your entire readership already. But the essential thing about being human – about being anything with a pulse and choices – is trying to control one’s living conditions to make them beneficial to one’s self, isn’t it? AKA survival. Like I was saying, as one control freak to another, what might you notice about all those items in the title above?
Did you say they are all things beyond one’s personal control? Or maybe you just thought, I hate friggin’ questions that try to force me to someone else’s answer, because that’s REALLY controlling! Either way you reach the central point here: CONTROL IS THE SELECTIVE WAY WE ACCUMULATE PERSONAL BENEFITS AND ELIMINATE THREATS TO OUR WELL-BEING. (Unless maybe you are an ant or a bee or a communist, in which case you derive your identity only as part of the collective.)
But what if the choices you make in establishing control end up controlling you, limiting you, ceasing to be a benefit? We grow, after all, and as our needs change, the controls we opted for as security and fulfillment may confine us. In fact, this is what happens to all of us to one degree or another, I believe. If you feel like you are trapped by routine and dying inch by inch in the circumstances of your life, the point may not need emphasis. And if you are a writer – or anyone creative – control may be that faceless enemy you call “writers block,” or maybe you call it boredom or stagnancy or something slightly more accurate that reflects your frustration like…fallow, sedentary, freedom-crushing, soul-rotting premature death.
In such a frame of mind you may regard that list in the title of this essay as the cause of your plight. Bad joss, you sigh and knuckle under to life’s myriad social mechanisms, myths and pressures that keep you in line (now that’s CONTROLLING). But those phantom concepts in the title are your escape route, and you should invite them into your daily life with urgent fervor. Privately…if it must be (you are already living a secret life – shhh.) You can call those title items anything you wish, but what they really represent is breaking with routine, abandoning the rut, making a right turn when familiar stresses demand you turn left. Trust your gut – unless it’s filled with fear and guilt. Fear and guilt bestow false virtue and lock one into a charade of honesty. Trust your gut if your dreams are still nourishing you there. Cultivate those terms I’ve used in the title as if they are your universal visa, your all-border pass to all things and all places. Because that’s what they are.
You wanna take a test drive? OK. Escape with me. Let me switch to my Cannibal Essay format, and give you an example. How did I shake up my day today? When did the magic get invited in? Pick a time. 9:30 AM?…9 ½ is good. We’re biking up the street on the way to anywhere/everywhere, specific destination unknown, and we stop in at Norby Nation – a family of seven who have sort of adopted me. In my pocket are five Werther’s butterscotch candies, which I pass out to the kids, who are all clearing weeds from the backyard garden under their father’s (my buddy Bruce’s)direction. I tell them that the candies are seeds and that if they plant them, a Werther’s tree will grow. Annaliese – who from age 8 has appointed herself as my personal critic and social advisor – puts me to the test. She plants one as a challenge to my credibility. An uh-oh moment for me? Nay. This is kismet, serendipity – all those good terms in the title of this essay. See, this is where you escape the pattern, the rut, and invite the magic in. I mean, take note, you are hearing from one of the guardians of magic, a child! You do not chuckle adult-like and blow it off. Instead, you hie yourself to Walmart’s and buy a 1-foot tall tree (plastic is OK), and then you cram the branches full of Werthers and plant it in NN’s backyard. Congratulations, you have just broken the Law of Living Tediously – jailbreak, jailbreak! – and your imagination is on the loose, because even if that plastic tree doesn’t take root, something else has. Read the title again. You have to nudge that stuff. It’s there. And when you do – when you let motivation spark imagination – you kick down the door to inspiration and things just start to HAPPEN. Trust me, magic is looking for us. Read on…
So, we’ve opened the door, left the beaten path of the ordinary just by doing a silly little thing, an eccentric thing, crazy and free. And now we are taking a hike to Elm Creek, a 5600 acre park preserve, thundering along, enlivened by what just happened, keenly in tune with the open-endedness all around us, the sense of prerogative and the existential nature of nature. The outré forces have stopped being coy with us, because we are true believers…so here it comes, here it comes…the magic!
Only, remember, this really happened and you’re borrowing my life, so you have to understand a little personal histoire first. The exact spot where I’m standing is sacred ground to me, a place where on March 27, years ago now, I spent the most miraculous afternoon of my life. So I’ve never stopped revisiting it or celebrating its magic. It was very much like the romantic idealism of the forest scene in the movie Avatar where Neytiri discovers that Jake Sully (…hey, you know I didn’t write the script!) is the Chosen One because the floating seeds of the Sacred Tree suddenly waft to his arms and shoulders. And that’s exactly what happens now. I am standing there in this galvanizing place and a half dozen diaphanous seeds floating from whatever mundane source suddenly catch a puff of something’s breath and settle gently on my arms and chest. Have you ever had that happen with more than one dogwood or dandelion or milkweed “Santa Claus” at the same time? I don’t know what the seeds were, but at that moment…in that place…parodying that movie right down to my name and romantic history/destiny…? Wishful thinking, you say. OK. But life takes place between the ears, and this essay is all about awareness. Magic follows the path of least resistance, and like I said, when you put yourself in the way of fate, destiny, serendipity, karma, kismet and star-crossed ironies and coincidences, you allow internal realities to trump life’s external appearances.
So, yeah, I’m still a control freak (but one who knows where and when and how to be just the opposite). I like to analyze (but not judge) and to notice patterns – especially the non-pattern pattern that refutes all other patterns. Transcendent living begins where you drop logic, relinquish control, and embrace the intuition that arises from some nameless repository of the soul that harbors perfection, quantum leaps of imagination, insight without anchors, and – by any name you choose – magic!
Now, you take control – because even though I enjoy your company, you’re not going to be original if you’re following anyone. I have no idea where your path goes. I’m just suggesting that you have to DO something. Something that refutes what you normally do. Permit the meaningful and the imaginative to penetrate the predictable and the dull in your life. It doesn’t have to be dramatic, but it can’t be automatic – i.e. routine. Drive a different route, shop a different store, walk backward, whistle, splash in puddles as you hike in the rain, confront a lie, pursue a hidden truth, get out in nature away from four walls, talk to yourself when you’re alone and say all the things you don’t dare say in anyone’s presence, sleep on the floor, climb a tree, shout, laugh, revisit the best memory in your life in any way you can (and the worst), phone someone who inspires you, stay up all night, whisper your dreams to a star, whisper your FORBIDDEN dreams to a star. OR…you can just skip all that and get through life with as little creativity and adventure as possible. But as the saying goes, if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.
Your thoughts are welcome, your attention valued.
Thomas “Sully” Sullivan
http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com
Heya Sully!
Great post! You had me journeying to NN’s, Walmart and on to Elm Creek, and along the way a quick and memorable detour to watch Avatar one evening as we introduced our young gal to the pleasures of that wondrous story. Call it kismet, destiny or whatever, at the time it was an incredibly serendipitous experience and your cannibal essay just re-evoked another through the magic of memory. Awesome! Isn’t that why we both write and read!
Now, just to take exception for one small moment, you know how I abhor that term ‘control freak’ with all it implies about being out of control about controlling… so can I just re-share the distinction: ‘control mastery’… perhaps it’s not that we are control freaks, but control masters, who know when to let go control and allow the magic of serendipitous experience to take control and guide us in those wondrous moments of life…
smiles, Grant
Distinction noted, approved and endorsed, of course. Why else would anyone adopt and maintain a given level of control unless they felt it was the appropriate one, i.e. the right mastery for them? Happy to have you be the steward of semantics so that I can trammel all over the English language! Rhetoric always leaves me vulnerable to interpretation, and my slightly satirical style comes back at me like a boomerang. It’s mostly an asset in good-faith conversation, a definite complication in serious polemics, and death-by-my-own-tongue if someone takes my hyperbole too literally. Glad you know the difference, my Oz-ian friend, and clarify for me in the right forums. I still remember that night you and I sat up till near dawn and covered the cosmos wall-to-wall. Got a feeling a recording of that conversation would’ve made both our fortunes… (And to think Fiona hit the hay early and zonked out with a baby boa constrictor under her pillow!)
I went on a fantasy ride…..amazing!
You are a true believer, Donna…which is why your life is so full-spectrum. Hope you never lose that courage you have. As you know, without risk, one neither grows nor triumphs. For you, fantasy can always become reality because you’re never afraid to cross the bridge.
Ah, how your words do inspire me! I am in the midst of doing something that may seem so mundane, but is shaking my little world and when it’s done and the tears and pain are over, I will be free of the mundane and materialistic things in my life and have new space to breathe.
I am decluttering my house and my life. Giving away everything but the bare necessities and my dogs. I have too long been bound by “things.” It feels so good and so bad at the same time to part with “things” but they are going to good homes. My beloved departed Beagle, Snoopy, taught me that material things don’t matter, because he devoted a portion of every day of his life to chewing up most of them or rendering them useless and I still loved him and still survived.
I recently finished helping clear out the house of a hoarder in my family and made a pact with my better, higher self that this will not happen to me. The strange thing is that when I clear a space, things seem to grow back, like the proverbial clothes hangers that multiply in the dark of the closet. But, I will keep going and it really is cathartic.
Thanks for your encouraging words to do something different! I am “uncollecting” the unneeded parts of my life that are just taking up space.
By the way, Sully, although I will never get over losing Snoopy, I did adopt another little Beagle, a girl this time whose time was up in the shelter. You know what that means–
they drove her all the way to Denver from the shelter in Kansas. She’d been abandoned at least twice that they knew about, so she’ll be safe here if I can keep the little escape artist from getting out the front door.
Here’s to wonderful skiing for you and wonderful space for me in the coming days!
So glad others will get a chance to be inspired by what you are sharing here, Dorie. And I’ll tell you what, as someone who’s seen the intricate collections of what seems like a dozen lives go out the door in various poignant ways, I can tell you you never miss stuff. Not if you go on living the same way – fully, honestly and with adventure in your soul. In fact, the problem is you start amassing all over again. Interesting stuff, temporary treasures, things which you assigned memories to, but hey, skinny that down to words and pictures and don’t let yourself become a museum. If you catch yourself sitting down to wallow in some “arrived” version of yourself, that guy in the corner will be Norman Rockwell painting a still life of YOU! Thanks again, Dorie, for the object lesson…
Friday night I’m driving on the NJ Parkway and find myself in total gridlock. This is not unusual as people trek to “The Jersey Shore.” What is unusual is the sky turns grey and tons of opposite facing funneling clouds start to be drawn together as though some magnetic force is working. The sky begins turning shades of blue and purple that I have never seen before. There’s a storm warning on the radio and my radar is up. Is this a blessing or a curse – I don’t know but it could be described by your title. Hoping that I’m not going to be lifted like a tinker toy with mounds of cars into some vortex, I pray and take a look at what’s really important and how I become so misguided most of the time. It doesn’t help that I need to get to a gas stations for multiple reasons including getting fuel. Hours tick away and I’m deciding that if I survive this exodus, I’m moving to a new state that has many less cars. Intermittently, police cars move down the shoulder blasting their sirens. Next fender benders start showing up but the traffic continues. Then the mother lode of accidents appears – 25 or more cars in various states of wrecks – no ambulances thankfully. The road opens and the gas stations appears and so does the most spectatular double rainbow. I soak in the glow still shaking from my imagination and the sense of well being the rainbow conveys. It’s a moment of being the chosen one who feels a deep sense of purpose and appreciation of the beauty of this earth. I am relunctant to share these experiences with the people in my life because so many are on automatic pilot they seem to NOT notice the magic. I feel foolish to have had yet another awareness (insert your title here). I dub you the “magic seer” who distributes the 3 d glasses and permission to report what is so often overlooked – beauty to see, feel, smell, touch, hear and enjoy in spite of everything else. Your essay is magnificently beautiful even though I hate butterscotch.
HOW TO FINE-TUNE THE MAGIC, by Anne of Jersey Shore. Luv it. Thanks for adding a chapter – a magnificently written and perceptive chapter. I’ll forgive your not liking butterscotch, ‘cause you give me credit for facilitating your post (dare I admit I have several pair of 3-D glasses purloined from one theater or another). Funny, I just e-mailed someone who said they saw me walking by a Rainbow supermarket that that was as close to a rainbow as I was likely to get, and here you go and give all of us in this forum an up-close and personal Oz-like connection with a double. Double thanks, Anne.
My daily scene has also lately included yet another layer of leaves that have been laid off by their employer trees from their summer duties and that now rest upon my lawn. The description in your newsletter of the local leaf fall was reminiscent of the many snow scenes you described so well that readers would feel they had actually visited and fallen in love with them. In view of your description, I don’t think I would have had to look out much less venture out to appreciate the current colors, descending dances and whirlwind rearranging of leaves. Of course, I would miss the unique fall aromas.
Points are to be awarded for your remark about the walls falling down. Extra points are awarded for not explaining it. Such humor is always spoiled by not letting it stand as first expressed.
Regarding your urging readers to DO something we don’t usually do is also recommended by studies that indicate it keeps brains sharp and prolongs a stimulating lifespan. Your comment about driving a different route brought back memories of the many times I was pronounced odd because I didn’t always take the quickest way to a destination. I have always felt sorry for all the persons who miss many chances to experience undiscovered beauty and wonders along unfamiliar routes – both concrete and mental.
Thank you for another grand piece, mon ami.
Amalgam
Hey, guy, those people who pronounced you “odd” were right. I mean, how many alpha males wind up with a nickname like Amalgam! You are wonderfully, uniquely, transcendentally odd (which explains our decades long friendship). You march to a different drummer, have x-ray vision, and you just may be the last truly Renaissance man on earth. I have achieved mutation status, a genuine eccentric, but I’m only working on being Renaissance odd. Thanks for being my inspiration!
As for leaves, I took David (one of Norby Nation’s kids) to Elm Creek yesterday, and we spent a couple terrific hours collecting leaves for his school assignment. Turns out leaves are just a gateway to appreciating what I thought I already appreciated. E.g. I was lamenting that you never see monarch butterflies anymore, and he said, “You mean like that one?” He spotted three more before the hike was over. Amazing what you can see through the eyes of a seventh grader.
True! True! And I would recommend that you not challenge a seventh grader to a computer game, either.
Thank you for the kind words, compadre.
Amalgam
So, we’ve opened the door, left the beaten path of the ordinary just by doing a silly little thing, an eccentric thing, crazy and free.
Absolutely what I long to do sometimes. Thanks for this post.
Glad to meet you, Damyanti of Singapore, and thanks for posting. Your blog site compares your non-fiction writing to “…bittersweet fruit, shockingly tangy and chock-full of healing…” If that isn’t already a step beyond longing, maybe it’s the license to write crazy and free, and the bridge you need to get to get to the fiction writing career you seek. You just might be there already in all but name.
Most things I read once, yours I read twice. Not because I don’t understand it, but because I want to remember it longer. As a writer I found your post both inspirational and instructive. In fact, I might steal a couple of your thoughts for a story I’m working on. As far as fate and all of its cousins are concerned, isn’t that what good writer does? creates characters that play out our imaginations. Print that comes alive in the readers mind. The magic of words. As a newbe (thanks to Susanne) I’m ordering your latest book, Water Wolves. I think this old guy is stuck on Sulliyism.
Good to see your comment, Jim. And I agree with you, directing fate is very much what a writer does through his/her characters. Creating worlds with words is a God-power, if only in the abstract. A more specific definition of abstract creativity – or art – that I like is the classic Greek version: “art is an imitation of nature.” That being the case, I guess we are all limited by how much insight we have into nature, and especially into the wildcards that I’m describing here. People who try to deal those wildcards out of their lives, limits the possibilities of imagination, freedom, passion, it seems to me – all those variables that inspire and motivate. Thanks and write on, Jim…
Marvelous! Wafting seeds and Werther trees, oh my! Magical as always!
You do have the very rare ability to analyze without judging. And I’ve never known another who sees the magic half so well or half so splendidly as you do. Thank you for revving me up for life’s journey, as you continually do, and reminding me that there are candy trees out there. You’ve given me a wonderful start for my day!
Now that I’ve let it all sink in, I am reminded of one of my favorite childhood books, The Cookie Tree. Its about a village where everything always happens exactly as it should all of the time, except for one day when a beautiful golden tree with chocolate cookies mysteriously appears in the town square. The town elders scramble to decide what it means. The adults are afraid, suspicious, angry. Should they chop it down? Keep their distance? Send for help? As everyone frets and wrings their hands, a little boy eats one of the cookies. Mmm! The village kids start shaking the tree and the cookies fall down and they eat them up. They are delicious. They don’t question this amazing bit of magic that has come their way. They gobble it up!
It occurred to me when my kids were little that we spend a lot of time teaching our children that it’s weird to be enthusiastic about all the magic in the world. You can’t taste your shoe, boy! What are you nuts? Don’t paint hearts on the wall with your Jell-O. And put on some clothes, for pity sake! There has to be a happy medium, I guess. I had to tell my son to take that wasp out of his mouth and I’m not sorry I did. But you, my friend, are proof positive that it’s possible to grow up and still dare to wolf down a good cookie when you see one growing on a magic tree. Or a Werther’s Original, as the case may be.
Well, I don’t know that Werthers will ever be as magical as your Jilly-Jally ButterMints, Carole, but I do know where Friar Tuck’s garden is. And I hope anyone reading this comment will want to trace down your forthcoming magical story collection THE WHISPER JAR and find out about both. I was honored to write the foreword and enchanted by the elfin quirks of your imagination. Your muses throw one helluva party; how do you get to sleep at night? The e-book comes out – when – just before Halloween?
P.S. to Carole. What a great short story – The Cookie Tree? How come I missed that one? This is what happens when you grow up reading Dostoyevsky instead of Dr. Seuss. Now I have to go back and read all of the latter. Correction…now I GET to go back and read all of the latter. This sooo reminds me of what my ultimate friend once said to me, that she wanted to read PLATO’S REPUBLIC and instead had to read NEMO’S ALPHABET. Maybe everyone should exchange reading lists at some point in their lives… Well, I must strip down now so I can paint Jell-O hearts on the wall while I’m sucking a wasp
Paint away! And don’t forget to taste your shoes.
Easy to do…with my foot in my mouth!
Just back online and finally able to read the mid-month essay I await each month. Inspirational, as always, and followed by thoughtful comments that will take a second reading when I’m rested and able to take it all in. Could comment on each comment! But for now I will just congratulate Dorie on her process (loved the term “uncollecting”!) and tell Grant that his “control master” has given me a new appreciation for my own tendencies!
Spot on, Jeani, writing these columns is like opening the cover of a book, and the last 20 or so chapters are written by readers. Dorie’s “uncollecting” is how you keep yourself from being owned by the things you’ve gathered around you. The fact that there isn’t a term already in place for that tells you something about human nature…and by inference, something about freedom. Uncollecting. Now that’s control mastery.