The Other Deserter of Destiny
Destiny, by definition, is written and determines what happens to our lives. As with religion, the little margin we have is limited to believing or not in this idea. Whether we look at it in a relative or absolute way, it seems undeniable that this issue deserves some attention, at least for a few minutes.
We lived in a damp city, at that time cornered by a sharp winter that appeared to succeed in becoming eternal. Everything seemed to be drawn in shades of white, against a background that was always black. We walked in silence, with our heads buried in the necks of our coats and our hands in our pockets, rather by the resignation we carried inside, in our chest, than by the cold. As we always did, we stopped to reflect on the bridge, from where the thick fog did not allow us to see the river. We talked about the present and the future. But above all, we spent our time regretting what had been prepared for us.
Award-winning anthropologist and humanist Ivana Arsán has no hesitation in distrusting the idea of destiny, defining it together with fate as “simple philosophical and even existentialist explanations of the future”. The shared category doesn’t keep her from defining destiny and fate as “twinned opposites, the two sides of the same coin: the future”. They both represent “the impossibility of human beings to tolerate uncertainty”. In this way, “in the mind of each human being destiny creates the idea of security and acts as a guide, or inexorable, indisputable and supra-human path”. Just before finishing her suspicious cigar and even without us asking, Arsán goes back to the subject of fate and without hesitation claims that even this is based on logic; this logic that we do not know, that has not been discovered due to its inherent complexity. At this point, Arsán unwittingly agrees with the legendary Doctor Sanguinetti, an engineer author of the famous Formula of Success, who states with a hint of terror that “fate is not really that hazardous”.
Life had played a mean trick on us, and what was written for us was a long way from our dreams, always expendable, always postponed. What terrible sin had we committed, perhaps in some past lifetime, to deserve this miserable existence that tasted of punishment? We would not tolerate for another minute to carry the crosses of others, or of other pasts, or of other desires that were not our own.
The renowned and harsh contemporary philosopher Germano Don Caldani, who usually receives us in a shabby bar, is in the same line of thought as Arsán and Sanguinetti. To find him there is also a part of destiny, part of the future we can predict. A white drink decorates his right hand, where he will rest his gaze throughout the talk, during which he will provide us with his always enthralling definitions. When questioned about destiny, he replies almost angrily: “I don’t believe in destiny and I do not rely on anything to support it. Believing or not is a decision and not believing seems less comfortable, less miserable. I strongly dislike the idea that a superior being dictates the paths along which my life will unfold. It’s true, there are believers in these easy ideas, that make life more bearable and free us from the responsibility of what we are going to do. And more importantly, of what we are going to be”. Perhaps affected by his gambling addiction, he adds some probabilistic definitions: “However, I do believe in the existence of an order of all things, and, as an old saying goes, chaos is an undiscovered order. The reality is that any situation could be predicted if we had enough information”.
My old companion, a childhood friend, had the courage to finally propose the inescapable, what we already knew in our hearts. Turning his eyes at where the horizon should be, he announced to me that he would desert destiny. And by doing so, he pushed me to a transcendent crossroads with no return, as it always happens when we face those who decide to be true to themselves. If it was true that I wanted to surrender to The Truth, this was the opportunity to do it. Would I leave my friend alone? Would it leave myself alone?
Destiny exists. And not only that: it is indisputably written. However, we are not condemned to follow its paragraphs literally, just as a theatre actor is not compelled to follow the script, no matter how well written. Indeed, the actor does not usually alter the words of the script, but this happens not out of impossibility, but rather out of prudence. He follows a script which he may not like, and then the play ends without shocks or surprises. The same thing happens when we abandon ourselves to the flow of a calm river allowing it to drag us to its mouth. That’s what destiny is: letting go, not doing. Life by omission. And just as the actor knows how the piece will end, we can glimpse into our destiny if we project our present into the future. I can see my destiny with striking and painful clarity, not only in my overwhelmed mind, but everywhere, every day, with my own eyes.
We would desert destiny. Heresy would be punished with harshness, with such exemplary harshness that future defectors would think it twice. The eventual punishment, however, would hardly be worse than the heavy chains of that which is established. The paranoia of a free man is always preferable to the resignation of a prisoner. And to have destiny behind us, lurking, is better than having it on our backs, spurring on us. From that moment, my friend became known as The Deserter of Destiny.
The astrologer María Mercedes Herrera declares that “although from a strictly professional point of view I subscribe to the existence of destiny, of course determined in the stars and decipherable because of my abilities, I personally lack any further precision on the subject”. She further notes that “the discussion (and therefore this writing) is not important, since it is impossible to prove any of the theories. How can we know if the decision to listen to my opinion is the result of our freedom or the inexorable consequence of our destiny?”. What she can assure is that “it is the losers that tend to believe in destiny, to foist their own faults on it, while it is the winners who tend to discredit it, to take credit for themselves, even when that is not the case”.
A few years would pass before Destiny took it upon itself to irrevocably corner my old friend The Deserter. Perhaps his humanity was much more limited than his ambitions and, after all, it was not possible to escape something so definitive. In the confusion of our escape, we had parted ways long ago and I only heard it was a closed, misty night, like the first night, when Destiny besieged him in a narrow dead-end street. Once again, I had been left alone. Coldness is a sad quality of those of us who live on the run and it is what allows us to overcome such painful losses as this one. Destiny is now after me, but I will not allow myself to be defeated. Nor to disappoint the few who still believe in me, to whom I owe myself. Those who, in an overstatement, call me The Other Deserter of Destiny.
Translation by Carolina Quintana, translator and simultaneous interpreter specialized in art and literature
carodetigre[at]hotmail.com
Original version (in spanish)
