About to trot down the stairs of the Lorimer St. L/G subway station in Brooklyn, a wall mosaic to my left grabbed my attention.

Stopped me in my bloomin' tracks. Really, it was one of those lapses in time where the outrageous quantity of thoughts in your brain fools your body into believing you've been stationary for hours - that is of course until the actual split second draws you, in reverse, to the catalyst of that bomber squadron of ideas.

Right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot... toe, heel, toe, heel, toe, heel, toe, heel, pivot, stop.

Faith and Fate. Cause and effect? One in the same? Mutually exclusive?

While blogging, by no means is the appropriate forum for this discussion, I'm going to graze the tip of the iceberg anyway, so bear with me. Let's start from the very beginning*:

Faith:

Middle English feith, from Anglo-French feid, fei, from Latin fides; akin to Latin fidere to trust.

1 a: allegiance to duty or a person : loyalty b (1): fidelity to one's promises (2): sincerity of intentions2 a (1): belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2): belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1): firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2): complete trust3: something that is believed especially with strong conviction ; especially : a system of religious beliefs faith>

Fate:

Middle English, from Middle French or Latin; Middle French, from Latin fatum, literally, what has been spoken, from neuter of fatus, past participle of fari to speak.

1: the will or principle or determining cause by which things in general are believed to come to be as they are or events to happen as they do : destiny2 a: an inevitable and often adverse outcome, condition, or end b: disaster ; especially : death3 a: final outcome b: the expected result of normal development.

The concept of faith is quite easy to grasp, while fate remains the more complex element. By many thinkers of the past century or two, fate is generally written off as a notion of the weak, unable to control their own lives, or as a device used to quickly rationalize error. Whether or not you take claim to that school of thought, it's interesting to reflect on such a lingual device that can be positive, negative, a dismissal** or an excuse.

**Avoiding the part of this conversation, where it would be necessary to talk about the "God" complex in which fate is dismissed in assuming that you and you alone can control everything that surrounds you, we'll just skip ahead.

But... Is fate not fate when there are other factors involved? Enter faith.

Is faith directly correlated to positive outcomes? I'm going to go with a big YES. Not always, but being the master of your fate simply means to stand firm in your character, and more importantly, to understand that character. As my dear friend Carl Jung said, "When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." So, if you are constantly thinking and holding true to ideals, it's possible that the concept of fate as a whole either a) doesn't exist or b) is a synonym for strong faith and solid character and I, of course, tend to believe the latter.

And then, we will also skip the part where I talk about how this ties in with Jung's ever-popular concept of synchronicity as well as the visual aspect of a balancing boulder, because I know Rach doesn't want to read that much white type on black backing and quite probably, neither do you.

I shall leave you with 1) a brief description via wikipedia (quick, not credible - I know, I know) of synchronicity and 2) the final lines of The Police's "Synchronicity" in hopes the connect will already have been made to this whole conundrum without me writing it. Or maybe I'm just crazy. Both equally plausible.

1) The idea of synchronicity is that the conceptual relationship of minds, defined as the relationship between ideas, is intricately structured in its own logical way and gives rise to relationships that are not causal in nature. These relationships can manifest themselves as simultaneous occurences that are meaningfully related—the cause and the effect occur together.

2)Effect without cause
Sub-atomic laws, scientific pause
Synchronicity


*definitions taken from Merriam-Webster online (http://www.m-w.com)