Yesterday afternoon I shopped groceries for Juliet, but overlooked the eggs! Now what? May be an extra trip will fix it. We spent some time correcting chapter 14 of her story. Juliet is very anxious about making mistakes in the typing, which is what I do for her. Everything has to be right the first time around. My approach is one of multiple passes to make the various correction for spelling, grammar and composition. So we arm wrestle a bit about that, but get along alright.

Besides the typing I made two salads, while she read the article on Pakistan that I’d brought her, a copy of what Herman gave me. I had also made a copy for Sybil, who was born in Pakistan as the first ‘white’ baby after independence!

His [Gould] writing style is very conversational, displaying his erudition in distracting ways at times, before getting to the point.

Once home at about 7:pm, I read some in Gould’s tomb. His writing style is very conversational, displaying his erudition in distracting ways at times, before getting to the point. I also come across words that I do not find in most of the books and articles I read, so the dictionary is called upon frequently.

Later on I gave some thought to the 2015 Parliament of Religions conference in Salt Lake City and possibly attending it, but I remain undecided about it. After the CBC National I got ready to check in after cleaning up the dishes.

This morning I was giving some thought to the idea of having a destiny in one’s life. Do you discover such a destiny? If so, who created that destiny? If you do not know where your destiny comes from, are you then not filling in the blanks on a form that has been handed to you? If you discover a destiny, how do you know that it is your own and not some directive by some other source?

These are questions that surface in me, because I feel that my sense of independence is compromised by having a ready made destiny for my life discovered. “Who put it there?”, I ask myself! “If I am to be an independent individual, should I not be constructing this destiny myself?” That is my query when engaging in these kinds of thoughts.

Pursuing a ready made or revealed destiny may be just the chasing of a mirage with no ground value. Ground value - ‘ground truthing’ as we used to call it in air photo interpretation - is needed and it consists of your own life experience.

The destiny then is the discovery of it in the process and the experience of living your own life, not something that comes to you from elsewhere, from some hidden source.

However, as I look back over my own life I notice destiny shifts. First is the destiny of completing basic schooling, followed by career choices. I was assisted in these two stages by my parents and peers. Then comes the choice of life on your own - I emigrated to Canada - , the choice of partner or not, where to live and work.

You can see that we are talking about an a destining that is formed in increments, it accumulates with the experience of the life lived and is also shaped by it.

At my age I can combine the experience of my life time with my knowledge and interests, to perceive that our human destiny is ‘self inflicted’ to put it oddly but succinctly.

I find it interesting that at my present stage in life - retired at seventy-eight - my destiny has become a very explicit engagement with value frameworks on a global scale. How do we humans learn to get along? - is a central question for me. And how do we improve on what we do now, which is far from ideal and may even take a detrimental and self destructive turn.

At my age I can combine the experience of my life time with my knowledge and interests, to perceive that our human destiny is ‘self inflicted’ to put it oddly but succinctly. We have formulated our own various destinies as we perceived them best at one time and now have to live with the combined effect and affects of those choices, made in our human past.

The outcome of today‘s ‘confluence of influences’ - as I like to say that - is that destiny is not foretold. We can succeed magnificently or self destruct in failure, as we can discern from our human past, illustrated by monuments and ruins of cultures once unchallenged in their magnificence.

How then does destiny emerge? Destiny is not cast, but forged in the smithy of experience. This implies sweat, work and persistence.
<10:02am~