Fate vs faith

“Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.”

–  Saint Augustine

We have successfully entered the second month of the New Year. Which means officially, or as officially as you can call it, the river of resolutions and ‘what’s in store for me this new year’ has run its course. I don’t know how it goes down in other cultures but at least in India, a lot of people are looking at their personal astrologers, reading up on their zodiac signs, going to their favorite mystics while trying to cleanse and cement the start to the new year. This. of course, has me included, not because I ever put much weight by the ways of the stars but because it is just fun for some light weekend reading. My latest Buzzfeed quiz says that this is the year I will finally travel the world, so I am sure it is to be. I’ll just collect booster doses in the different countries as my souvenirs.

My waywardness doesn’t come because I wince at astrology. I, in fact, think that when explained with the right context, it could be quite wise. While I come from a spiritual family, we aren’t overtly superstitious. So more than meeting astrologers who claim the world to be hanging by a thread – a thread which has to be worn by your poor wrists – I have met astrologers who talk about context and willpower more than weird connections. With all the Trelawney’s out there, I have seen some Firenze’s too (and yes that is a Harry Potter reference, I hope you now have all proofs that I am a millennial, thank you very much).

But one of these acquaintances made me think more deeply than the others. This was a while ago. We were consulting one of our family astrologers for a big milestone that we were yet to achieve. It was during this conversation that the person contemplated, “I can tell you only one part how your life may unfold. That is Yogam. But the other half is tied to what you want to do. That is Sankalp”.

Yogam and Sankalp come from the Sanskrit language. The former means fate while the latter means commitment. Astrology is often disregarded as meaningless mythical meanderings. But the right way to approach it is that it’s a combination of two things – context and choice. Look at it this way – what’s written in your fate is the environment that you may be in (context) but you choose to commit to certain decisions within that environment (choice). For example, I don’t know why I specifically was born in India but I could make a choice to go live in Italy. Yogam of being born somewhere and Sankalp to live in a certain manner.

But how does all this exactly unfold as your go through life? Let me break it down like a video game. The video game of life so to say. Within this video game, you are bound to come across certain junctures. These are your chances to level up or find hidden new routes within the game. It’s basically an opportunity and you don’t know where it will lead to, but you do have a chance. Chance or what we call destiny/karma/just pure luck in real life. That is Yogam. But this is where choice comes in. You decide whether or not to take that opportunity, between option A and option B. You weigh your opportunity costs, your risks through your gaming acumen. Or the in real life, a decision point to be made basis your ambition, situation, and persona. You pick one route finally and head down that way. Now whatever be the outcome of the route, your overarching goal of winning the game never changes. So even if you face more or less hurdles in this new route that you have chosen, you will persist and go on till you win the level. That is Sankalp.

What astrology does is try to give you an idea of how the overall direction of your video game is looking (is it on hard, medium, or easy mode) and what is it that you may have to do as you shuttle through these choices (what kind of mindset should you be in or what may make the choices easier). So, if you look at it, astrology isn’t an audacious pitch of fate against faith, it is basically trying to telling you how much faith you would require at different stages of fate. It’s a bird’s eye view, a guiding general direction.

But here’s the funny thing about fate versus faith that I learnt that day. While fate and faith do work in tandem, and you have both bouncing off each other on a regular basis (probably you unknowingly broke your pencil today and you decided to buy a better one versus berating the old one you had), there is one which plays a bigger factor here.

Most astrologers would tell you it is Yogam but the ones that I have known and who look at the fire in your eyes rather than just the fine lines on your palm, say it is the other. Sanklap or your commitment drives a lot of what you do and where you end up. If I go back to my video game reference for a second, yes, it is possible that you are currently on a difficult level and for some reason or the other you end up choosing a new route there which is even more challenging. But if you have that faith and belief in yourself, you will find a way to unlock the level. No matter if it takes you one day or ten. So, choosing of either route is basically just a change of scenery. On the other hand, you could have all the Yogam but if you don’t commit, it isn’t going to take you far. Your destination or goal will not budge if you don’t too.

Now you can argue that for someone else, that exact level might be easier because of their superb Yogam and maybe they choose the less challenging route and hence have a much quicker breakthrough. Yes, that is possible. This is parallel to two people going to the same college and having completely different experiences. One had to work day and night to gain that A grade while another just breezed through to that same top grade. This is where we start to think life is unfair. But here is something we miss – everyone is playing a different video game and while it may seem like they are on the same level, their difficulty mode maybe completely different than yours. Why is that, you may ask? It is because life is not your standard video game. It is shifting and multiplying and branching and changing. For each one of us. So, you never know but the level that you may have breezed through, someone else may have found it tough.

But between all this one thing is constant – everyone ends up picking their own set of skills. In video game parlance, they find hidden treasures or bounties along the way. So probably you picked up something along the hard route in your level that helps you thwart the evil giant in the next level pretty easily, as opposed to someone else who may not have walked that path and thus doesn’t have the ammunition to bring that giant down. Of course, from their POV, they think you have it all good as they break their backs to rattle up other means to defeat the giant.

So, what does all this teach us? Yes, you may have been placed in a game not known to you. There is the environment you were born in, your surround sound, your starting line that you was given rather than chosen but there is a lot you can do with your will and commitment from there on which is not a result of how the stars have aligned for you.

It is a result of how much you faith you have in your fate or how much faith you have in yourself.