A great topic to amuse our thinking minds, or to philosophically ponder upon in great depth, is that of fate. Yet since fate may sound like a religious term, the modern secular world likes to term is as ‘chance or happenstance’. But it’s two sides of the same coin. Whatever that happens to us – the decisions we make, the consequences we bare, the fortunes and misfortunes we receive, and so on – is in parts reliant on something that lies outside our locus of control.
A few metaphors may appoint this notion with more visual clarity: fate or chance is the sea on which we are sailing with our tiny boats – the only fragile thing in our control – at the mercy of infinite water, now turbulent, now calm. Similarly, fate is the cart to which a dog is tied to with a rope just long enough for it to move around but turn its course – we are that dog, at the mercy of whatever turn the cart takes, with only a little room to move about.
In one conversation with my teacher and mentor, I asked him about the role that fate plays in our lives from an Islamic perspective. I asked whether Allah has written or knows everything about my life, now and in past and future; and knows even what actions I will take at every certain moment. His reply was that although we are free to choose one path over the others – it is up to us – Allah nevertheless knows (thereby controls somewhat either) where every one of those possible directions lead, the one we took and the endless others we didn’t.
This brings to the utmost fascinating, beguiling, and rather vain idea of endless possibilities, infinite courses that I could take at certain points in my life; fascinating because of the sheer excitement of avoided realities, beguiling because such a loose strain of thoughts puts you in state of delude, and vain because we never why the things that didn’t happen, didn’t happen.
The ancient wisdom that speaks to me is that ‘everything happens for a reason, and that God has some motive in the hiding’; Candide’s (Voltaire’s optimist hero from his most famous novella) philosopher teacher tells him that ‘whatever happens is the best of all possible worlds’; in Zadig; however, both these ideas meet as our hero in this book, Zadig, suffers countless misfortunes, despite his virtuosity, yet as the story ends we come to know that everything had been the best of possible world, however tragic, and that there was a motive in hiding behind every distinct thing, yet linked all together, that happened to him throughout his journey. It’s like what Steve Jobs said, ‘you can only connect the dots looking backwards.’
A short book of comic adventures, Zadig (both the title of the book and the protagonist) tells the ancient story of philosopher that lived in Babylon, who after going through a series of misfortunes, which involves - his imprisonment and enslavement for saving a lady beaten to death by her husband and being sentenced to be roasted alive for saving widowers to burn themselves on the ashes of their dead husbands - among others, finally becomes the King of Babylon, and is convinced about the mysterious workings of fate. Indeed, how impatient, and rightly so since we have but no clue, we are against the misfortunes we bare which might ultimately be for our own good.
I’m surprised to see that Voltaire chose an Arabian ancient tale to write about, something which Western writers rarely do – given their views about West’s high-mindedness and East’s mediocrity. However, like ‘Candide’, this small book is a joy to read for its adventurous and eventful chapters as well as the wisdom that lies therein. A fun read.
Ratings:
4/5 **** August 31, 2021_