#101

I’m beginning to become one of the mind that there is not much that goes on that is merely chance.

That’s funny, coming out of me. I always was the biggest believer in the ability to reach out and get the things I wanted if I really wanted them. And I did, too. I wanted attention of certain people and I would go out and get it. I wanted material things. I’d eventually get them. It makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it? If you’re willing to throw it down to get the things you want, you’ll eventually get them if you keep yourself on task. It’s not that hard to see. Or to do, for me.

I’ve always be abnormally perceptive of patterns, too. I used to think I was intelligent and really gifted and really amazing. But as I grew older I realized I wasn’t, not really. There are a great many more talented and gifted and amazing than I am. My strength is way too narrow, yet unfocused, to be considered anything too special. The source of all my supposed intelligence and all my seeming capability is this; I have an eye for patterns. Not merely obvious ones, either. For example, when I look at people and I see them for who they are and, asI watch them more, I pick up on their patterns. I look and then I remember and understand the patterns of other people similar. Then I take into account their differences and splice the actions and reactions of those sorts of points of view with other past examples. It’s not perfect, but I can almost always second guess a person I barely even know accurately. In fact, I’ve done it multiple times by listening to and understanding another person’s account of what a person is like. It’s really only a matter of understanding how that person talks and holds themself, understanding how they say things and then you apply the same thing as before to the person they’re talking about. Simple. I did it and I did it accurately multiple times. I second-guessed Jacinta’s father correctly without ever having spoken or seen him beforehand. I second-guessed my mother’s new boyfriend before I met him. I did it with Alexis’ girlfriend too. There have been others.

I’m not claiming to be omniscent. I am not. All I am is very very good at understanding facets. Understanding generalities. Specifics? Go ask a psychic. I’m sometimes wrong. Not often, but sometimes. I can think specifically of times where I was wrong, too. I was wrong about Blake. I was wrong about Andrew. I was wrong about my own father. There have been others, too.

But at the same time, even though I’m wrong sometimes, I think it’d be a mistake to misjudge my capability for reading patterns. I’ve always been extremely good at it, especially when I’m looking. I naturally do it on a day-to-day basis, but when I’m actually looking for them I’m far better. It’s not just people, either, I’m actually better at seeing patterns in other things. People are often dynamic and there’s always a great room for error with them simply because there are so many forces acting on them at any given time. You can’t possibly know or guess them all so there’s always that chance you’ll be off. So with other things, I’m much better.

But back on track. I’m good at recognizing patterns. And I noticed a very unique one going on in my life. The pattern and feeling that I’m being shaped and molded to pick up certain characteristics and to be, to feel even, in a certain way. One facet of his unnerving feeling of fate involves my more-recent relationships. I’ve talked before about how it’s errie that it’s seemed like it’s almost fate that I’ve met the past three significant women in my life and I’ve also talked about how it was strange how they followed each other one-two-three and that I would’ve been completely unreceptive to them any earlier or any later after those relationships. But from each, in the short amount of time between them, was the perfect fit for where I was at the time. Each was the perfect fit and the perfect guideline, the perfect example and the perfect reason for me to change in a certain way for them. They only would’ve been that sort of person at that time, too. Now I look back and I can’t see myself ever doing the things I’ve done before. I just wouldn’t be receptive to them because I’m not looking for those things anymore. It seems almost….too planned out. TOO perfect, if you would.

But lets look at it the other way, too. Maybe I was more desperate and less choosey than I normally would’ve been because I was stressed at those times. So then I opened myself up and I went with someone simply because they were there and receptive to me. Maybe it was my state of mind and not fate that pushed me into those relationships and into those frames of mind. Maybe it was just chance and a stray mood.

But I don’t believe that. Beyond those relationships there have been various patterns of things popping up at just the right time to encourage me along. My mother’s recent kick on buddism is an EXTREMELY good example of that. Another is how I met Amy and how she was just the right person to move me along to really change my life when I can’t think of any other person who could’ve had that sort of impact on my life in the way she did. People who randomly gave me books. Books that really help me think and change as a person. ‘Chance’ meetings with certain people who tell me ideas or point me in the direction of reading or groups of people that end up change me in a very deep way. Just looking around the bookstore, randomly picking out a book and it being something that hits me so hard, so deep on just the right level as if all my life I was preparing up for that point so that I can move to the next level. I feel this all the time. There are countless examples of this, I could go on for quite a while.

Other examples of this are in my past all over the place. Why did I have a rough childhood? Because it was important for me to be strong, to be resiliant so that I could handle the endings of my relationships with Jacinta, Lindsey, and most especially Jessica. I wouldn’t have survived without that inner fire that eventually gets me defiant enough to get back up in pure spite of the situation, if only to spit in defiance. My connection and understanding of the ways of the Ojibwe, which at the time weren’t that important to me, are another one. Now they’re calling to me with a call so strongly it almost takes my breath away. I hadn’t realized I was listening as closely to Tim as I apparently was. I hadn’t realized I had remembered so much, that I had felt those things as much as I did. And now those things are helping to bring me back to the places I need to be in, to the sort of person I’m supposed to be. They didn’t matter at the time, but now they’re a very powerful force. There’s so many examples of this, too, that it’s unnerving.

To what end, though? Let’s assume that these patterns really do exist and that it’s not just a really rare, bizarre stroke of chance that things are teh way they are. What does it all mean? To me it really encourages the belief that there is some sort of purpose and meaning to my life. Something that I need to be doing, maybe it’s small and perhaps my role is only to be the sort of person, say, Jessica was to me to someone else, to help them be shaped in the way they’re supposed to be. But there’s a difference. I’m actively aware that I impact people and that there are things that seem to be shaping and guiding me. That makes the

equation much more difficult to analyze because of this; I am not Jessica nor anyone like her, at least not in this way. I must be something different. I must need to be aware that I have this task so that I keep on it, so that i keep working for it despite difficulties. So I can only imagine just how hard it’s going to be for me in the future. I only know that it will be. It’s going to be tough but I’ll get through it simply because I understand and recognize that I need to be doing what I’m doing; it’s what I am here to do. So I feel justified in how I’m dealing with things with Jacinta. I feel vindicated by pushing myself to go back to school. I feel right by smiling and being happy around other people and listening and helping with their problems. It’s simply right. This is what I’m supposed to be doing, I need to trust my spirit, I need to trust my inner guidance because there is most definately something pushing me in the directions that I’m moving in. They’re right. There simply is no other way, to me.

How they are right is another question, however. Is it because these are teh things I’m going to achieve? I’d like to say yes but that would be untrue. Perhaps I simply need to fail at these things so that I feel the way I do about failing them so I’m molded in that direction instead. I really don’t know. I just know that where I am now, this is where I’m supposed to be. That’s all.

These things also beg the question, “Why are you supposed to be doing these things? Is someone pushing you to?” That makes me think. These things, as much as a few other reasons, is one of my strongest reasons for believing in a God-concept (being God as an entity, God as a primal essence, or even God as hyper-intelligent Mice, but most likely the second). Simply because I feel the way I do, here. I trust two others and understand that they have reasons beyond merely believing because it’s easy or because they want to to believe. I trust them when they say they’ve heard things, that they know because of that. Perhaps these feelings are the way I am spoken to, maybe that’s the only way I’d be receptive. So now I listen and now I’m beginning to believe with more and more force.

So I’m beginning to believe that there is not much chance left in this world. It’s merely us not looking deep enough, not picking up on the patterns around us. For lack of a better way of putting it, God does not play dice. Things happen because they are supposed to. Is it really so far out there to say that the future isn’t as random and chance as people seem to think it to be. Can we not track a bullet and where it goes if we know force, velocity, wind speed, shape of the bullet, design of the barrel, consistancy of the air, temperature, and the obstructions in the path? Sure we can. We can pinpoint it, too. The only reason the calculations are off is because we round far too often, our measurements are not yet precise enough. So why is the future so chance? Why can’t it, too, be measured and be understood as a function of the things happening today? I see and acknowledge that I’m a logical product of my past and, because of my past and present, I’m going in certain directions. There is no chance there. Merely an amazingly huge number of variables. Billions of them. More, perhaps. So if I’m predictable, then others are predictable, too. I already know that they are because I can do it to a certain extent. So if you know all the variables and understand them, aren’t they just as predictable and static as the bullet? I believe they probably are. And it people are, why aren’t things? Things are just as predictable. We can predict and understand how a plant grows and, if we knew all the precise measurements and if we knew all the variables and if we could measure those infintesimal measurements we could pinpoint things as they are down to an absolute exactness. So then why is the future so random? I don’t think it is at all; we’re all moving and shifting on paths that’ve been set out before us a long time ago, possibly even before we were born. We’re doing the things we’re supposed to do, all of us, from the good to the bad, we’re doing what we need to do and what we’re supposed to do whether or not we realize it, whether or not we want to. There simply isn’t any other choice.

The only real question is this: “Why; to what end?”