orbit#n+1
What is destiny but the time of a life moving in orbit according to the gravity of who you are?
People are born with qualities that shape how time and circumstances move around them, making them difficult to change on their own. Family, living conditions, and personality all contribute to the unique gravity a person carries, which, in turn, shapes the important times and events of their life. It is like an orbit: a state of equilibrium, a predictable path that remains constant for eons unless acted upon.
As time passes, you begin to notice that certain themes return, even when you believe they have already been resolved. Again and again, they appear with different faces, but the same body and roots, moving along the same path. The same emotional patterns, the same types of relationships, the same existential questions, the same mistakes and choices. Like planets spinning around you in the same direction and speed, while you yourself continue orbiting something larger beyond your sight.
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Coming from a very spiritual culture where shamanism is prevalent, and where people are often believed to be spiritually sensitive, I have always been fascinated by the idea of seeing into the future. Over the past seven years, I have visited several shamans and fortune tellers, desperately hoping to relieve my anxiety about the future. I wanted guidance, or at the very least some validation that I was on the path toward a happy life.
Ironically, despite being told a fairly consistent version of my future — that my twenties would be full of struggle, that I would not stay in one place for more than two years, that I would try many things, paddling hard like a swan in water, before eventually finding peace in my thirties and quietly building a stable life away from my home country — the anxiety of somehow ruining my own life never seems to disappear.
I think my anxiety comes from a deeper fear that is two-fold. The first is that when the sun finally sets on the life that has been given to you, the meaning of it all will become obvious only in retrospect. Like any finished story, the summary will reveal the lesson that was invisible while you were living inside it. A pattern that others could see clearly from the outside, but that you were too close to recognize.
An answer that, if only you had known earlier, might have kept you from repeating the same test over and over again and allowed you to see more of what the world had to offer.
But an orbit, by definition, is a state of equilibrium. A predictable path that remains constant for eons unless acted upon.
Unless acted upon.
While extremely difficult, it is still possible for a life's course to change. I think it happens through two forces: external gravitational pull and internal evolution.
External gravitational pull occurs when another planet’s gravity is strong enough to alter the path you were on. Internal evolution happens when your own gravity shifts, either increasing or decreasing. Sometimes it even grows by engulfing other planets and becoming larger.
This leads to my second source of anxiety: deep down, I think I have always known that even if a road appears paved, destiny is not as fixed as it seems. The orbit of a life can still change depending on who you keep close, and how much of what you experience you absorb — enough to fundamentally shift the gravity of who you are. Then it becomes your responsibility to both protect your orbit and alter it for the better, without knowing the larger consequences or the impact it may have down the line.
I have been writing about the weight of choice, repeating lessons, and the same realizations this entire time, haven’t I?
One way or another, time after time, in post after post, I keep arriving at the same place.
Different faces, but the same body and roots.
What is destiny, after all, but the time of a life moving in orbit according to the gravity of who you are?
