Following a Stream

As I reflect on my blog posts from the last 12+ months, I realize that I have basically posted the same thing over and over again.... and as I contemplate another blog post, I realize that it is going to be the same thing again... so if I have bored you enough already you are certainly under no obligation to continue reading.

For some time now I have been stuck on the philosophical/existential puzzle of free will versus fate, or as I would call it, God's providence.

Does anyone else ever get the feeling like you aren't actually making decisions... that your life is planned out for you and while in the moment you may feel like you are faced with numerous options, however when you break it down, your hand has been forced. I've just had that overwhelming feeling lately, and I found it kind of strange. I've spent much of the past 9 months in Raleigh second guessing the few life decisions that I have made so far, but now all of a sudden I again feel like there was no decision. Finding myself in this position is simply a product of my past, my upbringing, the environment I was raised in, the company that I kept....

I'd be really interested to hear from the two of you that will be getting married soon, and how you have come to make this very important life decision. (I realize that a public blog is probably not the best place for those thoughts, and I'm not encouraging you to post that on this blog, but maybe in the form of an email or something, I would love to hear your perspective on decision making).

Or maybe yall are getting sick of me repeatedly posting the same thing...

I'll leave you with this treat. I recently subscribed to the New Yorker magazine, and found the following poem from this week's issue to be especially enjoyable:

"Don't do it, the guidebook says,
if you're lost. Then it goes on
to talk about something else,
taking the easy way out,
which of course is what water does
as a matter of course always
taking whatever turn
the earth has told it to
while and since it was born,
including flowing over
the edge of a waterfall
or simply disappearing
underground for a long dark time
before it reappears
as a spring so far away
from where you thought you were
and where you think you are
it might never occur
to you to imagine where
that could be as you go downhill."

Following a Stream, by David Wagoner