No fate but what we make

As artists, you will all know that art is subjective. When looking at a photograph, a viewer will form his own opinion and impose his own search for understanding. Why was that photograph taken? What does it mean? The viewer will decide his own interpretation of the story of the image, even though the photographer might have originally intended the story to be something completely different.

“The search for meaning” doesn’t just apply to art, it applies to all existence. The need to find a reason for everything is an inbuilt compulsion which is inherent in everyone. People need to impose their own interpretation on things, their own pattern, their own story.

In his book, “Fooled by Randomness”, Nassim Nicholas Taleb argues that humans are hardwired to see the world through the lens of the “narrative fallacy”. This is defined as the human drive to impose an ad hoc explanation on everything, even the most shocking events. Mankind looks for structure where there is none, and comprehension where none is possible. He believes that all people have a tendency to make false patterns and attribute causes to processes that are actually random.

I do this all the time. If something unexpected or unpredictable happens, I usually automatically assume that it must have happened for a reason. Richard says this is due to my inbuilt catholic upbringing, but it’s not just me who does this.

My mother-in-law, bless her cotton socks, is another prime example. She looks for meaning and pattern in absolutely everything in her life, and passionately believes that nothing in life happens by chance. There is no such thing as coincidence. Everything happens for a reason. She believes there is a Higher Power which determines everything, and she won’t make a single decision in her life without analysing that divine pattern in detail.
Over the years, I appear to unfortunately have absorbed some of this way of thinking. Instead of considering practical issues and acting on them, both Richard’s mother and I eternally look for the answer to the unanswerable question “IS IT MEANT TO BE?”

At the moment I am spending large amounts of time dithering about decisions such as “Do I move house?” This decision is based on me second-guessing the future and constructing a romantic mental photograph of me, in my future house, dressed in a pale blue Roberto Cavalli cocktail dress, greeting guests at my extravagant and trendy garden-party for models and photographers. It is night-time, the beautifully landscaped garden is subtly lit with torches hanging from the trees, and the guests mingle with naked waitresses who are sprayed in gold paint and serve nibbles and Pimms with lemon and little ice cubes that contain home-grown mint from the garden. Mmm. I can picture it now.

I guess I'm guilty of living in a fantasy world half the time, extrapolating alternative crazy futures which can never exist, but would really be very cool if they ever did. I have created a whole different alternative life bubbling along in my brain, which operates in parallel to the real one.

So my decision to move house is based on wondering if it is really my “fate” to move, or whether I am “supposed” to stay in this house, and is NOT based on realistic and practical points, such as how moving closer to my kids school would improve our quality of life because we could stay in bed longer in the morning. Thus I continue to wonder about my (fantasy fuelled) fate, without taking any real action, and so nothing ever happens.

This drives Richard completely nuts, of course. He’s much more sensible and believes that we make our own future. As in the movie Terminator 2, there is “no fate but what we make”. (Don’t you guys know that all of life’s questions are answered in the movies ?)

Realistically, I do realise that there almost certainly IS such thing as co-incidence. It is irrational to believe that there is something greater than all of us which decides our individual future. There is probably no such thing as fate, no pattern, no meaning in anything. Believing otherwise is merely existing in fantasy-land, living a delusion. If life is indeed a story, then you choose your own plot, and it’s based on your real and physical actions, rather than your imagination.

Of course, I could be wrong.




Cheeky Lee, being strong.