Against the dying of the light

I recently heard a song on the radio. One of those feel-good pop-y songs that I normally dislike so much, but the imagery was interesting, so i looked up the lyrics. One that managed to slip past my ears the first hear actually stood out at me "But who am I to tell fate Where it's supposed to go". It reminded me of one of my favorite quotes, "What is the point of having free will if one cannot occasionally spit in the eye of destiny?" I immediately felt a sense of disdain for the line from the song. "Who am I to tell fate where it's supposed to go? You're a person, all the more reason to stand and rail against your fate. It may win in the end, but you can damn well make it pay for the privilege." That's a mindset I try to take to whatever I do. If I'm going down, I don't care, but I'm sure as hell not gonna make it easy. Some call it stubborn, and I guess they're right, but it's a better way to live than to sit and accept whatever is gonna come your way.

Still, there is some wisdom to those words. Even if we stand against fate, we don't really tell fate where to go, do we? Are we not still guided by it, instead of guiding it? But this is something which may well simply lead us to a self-fulfilling prophecy. We let ourselves be led by fate. If we rail against it, we may never change it, so why try? But to try, even if you don't know if you will win or not, is the very process that fate must be changed by. Otherwise, it is simply following fate again. So we step forward into the unknown and give fate a giant middle finger in the face. Crass imagery, but accurate. Because if nothing else, we have our options between that or accepting fate. In a sense, being subservient to it. And I see no worse fate than that.

But what if we know with certainty that we can't change our fate? Wouldn't it be better to sit down and accept it, perhaps lamenting our powerlessness? No, I say. Stand, turn, and spit in fate's eye. Take every chance you have, down to the furthest shot, and keep on shooting until you run out of chances. Because if you've taken the time to recognize how fated something is, is it not important enough to you to strive for not just what you're given, but what you want? Should you not make some attempt to reach out and take it? The question is how to tell if you've gone too far. But that's part of trying, trying to find where the cost of something is worth more than the gain at the end of the road. Is the sacrifice so big you can't take the chance? And that's nothing that can be taught, only learned under the spotlight. When it comes to the fork in the road, do you sacrifice it all for what you want, or do you take the safer road and sacrifice nothing but the opportunity to go down the other road? Neither choice is truly better, but I find myself having taken the safer road, and beginning to take the other more and more, and feeling more rewarded for it.

Never stop striving, even when everything is against you. And never be quiet. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light".