Cliches and Greek Mythology

Fate. Destiny. Happenstance. Kismet. Serendipity.

All words synonymous with things happening at no control of our own. Happy accidents, predetermined chains of events.

Do only rose-colored-glasses wearing holy-rollers fall prey to these definitions? Can former cynics and everyday realists slip into the hands of the elusive Moira as the ancient Greeks once believed?

There is that ever clichéd saying that "Everything happens for a reason". People use this ad nausea when things in life throw you curveballs. Good, bad or ugly, those idiom spewing people that surround you live by the phrase. They may or may not believe it, but they say it nonetheless. Possibly hoping that it's vague explanation helps ease the unexplainable.

And it covers a litany of things. Death, illness, heartache. It covers new jobs, loves and babies. It casts its air of possibility over all that you see, do and feel and makes an excuse that everything will indeed turn out ok in the end.

I am not the holiest of people. I think there is something out there that is far greater than I could ever care to understand sure, but I don't know that I think it's just one Head Honcho, macking out in Cloud City, making dreams come true and smiting the bad people. I believe in Karma and trying to do good things. I also think if you do bad things it comes back on your worse, eventually.

I suppose the word Agnostic pretty much can sum things up for me in the whole religion department. I am not one to judge those who believe what they do, but I don't know that I believe it either. Then again…

So in my on-the-fence take on spirituality, here I am being thrust into the hands of Serendipity (and not just one of my favorite John Cusack movies).

Trying to make heads or tails of the whole idea of things being fated. Of certain aspects of life being meant to be. Of happening for whatever the reasons.

As many hardships as I've been through I can probably say honestly (and in yet another over used clichéd way) that it has made me who I am. And not for nothing, but I think (most of the time) I am pretty freaking fabulous (enough so I piss glitter, obviously).

Am I perfect? Far from it, but as a whole I think I'm a pretty good person. I work hard; I generally put other's needs before my own. I don't like to lie (which is good since I pretty much suck at it), I don't cheat or steal. I have the world's guiltiest conscience. Although if someone hurt anyone I cared about, I would go to great lengths to make their lives a living hell, but I don't think that necessarily makes me a horrible person.

But then that whole fate thing.

You try to plan things, and random nuisances get in the way. Little obstacles that make you rethink the direction you were headed. Nothing crazy like a train wreck, but just small inconveniences.

That inkling in the back of your mind that maybe something somewhere is trying to tell you something. It makes no sense to you at the time. It could be the world's worst possible time for something, but yet some tiny modicum of that destinial feeling creeps in. Maybe this is supposed to happen? Maybe the unplanned is part of the plan?

There's a new movie coming out in a SciFi-esque manner that there are people controlling everything behind the scenes. That fate is ultimately up to these powers that be living in some sort of Matrix-like alter existence, pulling the strings of your life like puppeteers.

I wonder.