Open Writing

You can't ascribe great cosmic significance to events: thus says ancient wisdom. Nothing is more important than anything else. When two people meet whose lives seem to connect in a magical way and they just "know" they are meant for each other, we are supposed to believe it is just coincidence.

And well it might be. Surely, events unfold like petals of a flower, without fuss, without a musical soundtrack to signal what is important and what is not. Theoretically, the falling of a sparrow to the ground is as momentous as a tsunami. The disappearance of a coin is as natural as the disappearance of a species. Things happen. They always have and they always will. We live in a changing universe.

Yet there is something inside the human soul that protests this cool logic. You and I know that some things mean more to us than others. We don't flinch when a tree falls in a distant forest, but we do when a building full of people collapses into a pile of rubble. They are both signs that the natural order is in flux, but we cannot in good conscience treat them the same.

We are not unfeeling objects in a system of arbitrary occurrences. We are, on the contrary, conscious beings with a developed sense of what is acceptable and what is not. This primes us to react in certain ways. We react joyfully to what feels right and good, and we react indignantly to what feels wrong and bad.

Here again, I am reminded of the sages who say, "Nothing is good or bad. Everything is as it is." People who train themselves to think this way eventually attain to a state of constant equanimity, which allows them to remain unaffected by the ups and downs of life. They appear enviably detached and serene - but do they not lose something valuable in the process?

I maintain that we are triune beings. We have a body, a mind and a soul. If we allow our minds to dominate, becoming so rational that we lose touch with our instincts and ignore our intuition, there is a danger that we will become either robotic or unconscious. The interrelationship of our physical, mental and spiritual faculties is essential, both for health and a fulfilled life.

Which is why I do believe great cosmic significance should be ascribed to events. Not that I want others to ascribe the significance for me. I do not want to be told that a certain ecological threat should begin to dominate my domestic life. Nor do I want to be told that a bus accident in a distant corner of the world ought to disturb my leisurely Sunday morning lie-in. What I am arguing for is the freedom to create my own significance. For example, I find it significant that a certain song about everlasting love happened to be playing on the radio as I was being called to the bedside of my dying mother. I find it significant that I was thinking of a long-lost schoolfriend on the morning someone emailed me with her contact details and a message that she wanted to get in touch. I find it significant that the person I met at an acting workshop and of whom I sought coaching turned out to be exactly suited to helping me overcome a recent painful experience.

Ascribing cosmic significance to events is a creative exercise that turns an otherwise dull life into a work of art. It gives shape to what is formless, meaning to what is incoherent, stability to what is chaotic, flavor to what is bland and purpose to what is, on a purely scientific level, utterly random. It gives us back the promise of personal destiny.