For everything its season
[Under development: 8 June 2005 ]
It appears to be a tenet of secular western politics that a person is free to determine how they live their life, laws being made in part to ensure that my freedom does not restrict yours. I am free to enter pretty well any profession, earn as much as I wish, live anywhere I can afford, travel wherever I choose, marry the partner of my choice (assuming their consent!), stand for public office, hold whatever religious and conscientious beliefs suit me, and entertain myself in a mind-boggling myriad of different ways. It also appears to be a core Christian belief, at least in my limited understanding, that people have free will either to sin or to choose the path of righteousness.
In contradiction, relatively few people I have encountered believe that the major aspects of their life are substantially under their control. Most people, it would seem, consider the summed influence of genetics, education, upbringing, family, neighbours, workplace managers and public officials to be overwhelming. Such people appear to believe that the degree of control they have in their lives is profoundly limited. There are indeed events (for good or ill) that appear out of the blue (such as a lottery win or a road traffic accident); there are indeed circumstances that lie beyond one’s own control (such as the illness of a close relative); and there are indeed contexts and environments that are far from easy to alter (such as the country in which one ‘chooses’ to live and work). However, the intensity of public interest in horoscopes suggests that many people feel sufficiently powerless to determine the course of their everyday lives that they seek accurate and precise prediction based on premises that belong to a different age. One way of coping with the uncertainty associated with feeling powerless is to believe that everything is pre-determined, and that there is nothing to be done to alter what will be. A variation on this predestination is that our only life choices are whether or not to follow our destiny (whatever that is).
It appears to me to be self-evident that I can make as much of life as I can be bothered, empowering myself to take control of whatever aspects of my life are open to my choice. For me, learning acceptance is not about abdicating responsibility for life choices, but involves discernment between what in my life is (and is not) easily responsive to change. Sometimes circumstances are not yet ready for change, and to engineer change upsets too many other factors. Othertimes circumstances reach a tipping point and nothing but confidence is required to make choices and to move on.
Perhaps the best known passage regarding acceptance is from Ecclesiastes. However, the writer, who it must be admitted is somewhat pessimistic, also implies that our life's course is pre-determined.
· To what extent do you believe your life, and that of others, is already determined?
· Why do you look at horoscopes?
· To what extent do you believe that you have choice?
· To what extent do you try to identify ‘tipping points’ in your life?
· How much emphasis do you give to creating opportunities for yourself?
Ecclesiastes 3
For everything its season, and
for every activity under heaven its time:
a time to be born and a time to die;
a time to plant and a time to uproot;
a time to kill and a time to heal;
a time to pull down and a time to build up;
a time to weep and a time to laugh;
a time for mourning and a time for dancing;
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them;
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek and a time to lose;
a time to keep and a time to throw away;
a time to tear and a time to mend;
a time for silence and a time for speech;
a time to love and a time to hate;
a time for war and a time for peace.
