The wheel of fortune

"With domineering hand she moves the turning wheel, / Like currents in a treacherous bay swept to and fro: / Her ruthless will has just deposed once fearful kings / While trustless still, from low she lifts a conquered head; / No cries of misery she hears, no tears she heeds, / But steely hearted laughs at groans her deeds have wrung. / Such is a game she plays, and so she tests her strength; / Of mighty power she makes parade when one short hour / Sees happiness from utter desolation grow."
~ Source: A Consolation of Philosophy, Book II, translated by V. E. Watts

Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings. Most readers must be familiar with this line: said to Brutus by Cassius from William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. It is strictly and philosophically true that there is no such thing as chance or accident; since these words do not signify anything really existing, anything that is truly an agent or the cause of any event; but they merely signify man's ignorance of the real and immediate cause.

Yet, no matter what, however illogical, men will have faith in the wheel of fortune; no matter that flighty fortune has never been a loyal mistress to king nor commoner. Be it be, for such is her lure that man will continue with his belief in her allegiance - even if such fidelity is fickle as fashion - and hope that she shapes our ends.

For, without such faith, man will lead a hopeless life. A life that will be, nothing but, defeatist, dejected, desperate, despondent, disconsolate, and downhearted. He will be forlorn and pessimistic; helpless and lost; incurable and irremediable. He will feel that his life is useless and in vain.

Impulse

When most tragic events turn on most trifling circumstances; and is traced to a momentary impulse - an impulse that sometimes cost all what we possess, even our life - we are driven to believe that our fate hangs on the accidental, or an inadvertent, drop of an action. As with poor Desdemona, the heroine of Shakespeare's Othello, whose fate hung on the accidental dropping of a handkerchief; or the unhappy death of Romeo and Juliet, whose life ended due to the miscarriage of a letter; the feelings such fickle turn of the wheel of fortune evokes, leads us to believe in the stars, more than in ourselves. The stars above us, govern our conditions - so we think and tend to believe in such external factors due to the imponderable inevitability of life.

The noble Caesar, in Julius Caesar, would not have met his untimely death, had he not postponed reading the schedule of Artemidorus, a well-wisher of Julius Caesar who had the knowledge of some planning and plotting against Caesar, and as a faithful subject, he wanted to save his ruler, whom he loved, from the evil clutches of the conspirators.

Likewise, Thomas Wolsey, an English political figure, and cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, who rose to become the Lord Chancellor during the rule of King Henry VIII of England, fell from the full meridian of his glory by a slight inadvertence, which all his deep sagacity could not redeem.

Thus, be it in plays or in real life, imagined or real, the predominance of chance over human designs, is most powerfully brought home as in the tragedy wherein the fate of Hamlet turns on accident after accident.

These fortuitous events are variously denominated, as Destiny, or Fate, or Chance; be it in the poetical religion of Shakespeare, or in the ordinary life of the people, they become recognised as the direction of a Providence that exercises supreme control over human affairs. Therefore, howsoever, much may we preach, or teach, that it is not in the stars to hold our destiny but only in our-selves; it would be meaningless to mortal man: man who cannot attribute a reason, or determine the cause, for his misfortunes. They believe that Men's fortunes are on a wheel, which in its turning, suffers not the same man to prosper forever; because Fortune's wheel never stands still, the highest point being the most perilous.

Fortune

For him who reposes his trust, not in his abilities but in the incessant turn of the wheel of fortune, "what fates impose, men must, needs abide; it boots not to resist both wind and tide." Hence: "Giddy Fortune's furious fickle wheel, that goddess blind, that stands upon the rolling restless stone" will necessarily grace his hopes, his life.

No matter that in All's Well that Ends Well, Helena says: "Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, / Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky / Gives us free scope, only doth backward pull / Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull." Humans will continue with their intrepid belief in the heavens and the stars; and place their trust on the humbug galore of interpreters of the stars. Such is the fallacy of human thought that we become fortunes fool and continue to search for higher and higher fortune. "The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool." William Shakespeare, in 'As You Like It.'

It would seem that most times life's good fortunes are unfairly distributed. That is why, we often feel that there were things in our life for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend.

Things that we often feel should never have happened, that seemed out of place, and wrong; because these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end. This is best brought home in, Shakespeare's Hamlet, when the protagonist says to Horatio: "There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come; the readiness is all; since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is it to leave betimes?" Or for that matter, in the same play: "Our wills and fates do so contrary run, that our devices still are overthrown; our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own." Thus, in spite of the uncertainty of the turn of the wheel of fortune; we believe that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way, we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.

Why would anyone like to know the future, or try to read the book of fate and determine the revolution of time? After all, is it not true that, the very fact of not knowing is the greatest life motivator? Hence, we should learn to enjoy, endure, and survive each moment as it comes to us in its proper sequence, as a surprise.

What matters in the final analysis is not fortune, fate, destiny, providence - call it what you may - but how one has lived life. Man has been fascinated with the subject, with its uncertainty, unpredictability, and ambiguity.

From when man began to think improperly; it has been so, and it will be so, till-time eternal, for eternity: unless and until, he learns to think properly.

See you this day next week. Until then, keep thinking; keep laughing. Life is mostly about these two activities. For views, reviews, encomiums, and brick-bats,: [email protected]