When famous popular and jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996) entered an amateur talent show at the Globe Theatre in New York she entered as a dancer, changed her mind, and won the $25 first prize as a singer.
She went on to a singing career lasting 6 decades winning 13 Emmys and earning the title of ‘First Lady of Song’.
At the time she was 18 years of age and living in an orphanage.
She was a favourite singer in my youth.
Did her destiny step in and invite her to change her mind at the last minute?
Was she being drawn to becoming a famous and successful singer and not a dancer?
When George Lucas was recovering from a bad racing car accident he began to conceive his ideas for ‘Star Wars’ after reading Joseph Campbell’s book ‘The Hero With a Thousand Faces’.
I’m sure you know the rest.
Did the disaster he suffered in his racing car career lead him to his fame as the creator of ‘Star Wars’?
In the world today we tend to try to hold on to the past when it’s taken from us.
The same happened to me when my freelance copywriting career of 10 years was taken from me in bankruptcy.
I survived to become an author and to live a happier life.
Is this the working of destiny?
What happens when the unexplainable redirects our lives to go the way we never intended?
I wonder, is that destiny?
Does it have our best interests at heart?
But then, don’t we have free will, to go in whatever direction we choose?
Maybe we have both.
And we can choose.
Which is free will.
I’m not suggesting you should abandon a good idea you’ve already started.
But then, to keep an open mind to opportunities in other directions that present themselves just when you’re feeling dejected about losing something you’ve already started.
“I just trust my beeps,” said the winner of a creativity business award recently.
Maybe we should always trust our beeps.
Here is what the Greek philosopher Plato had to say about our destiny.
Clearly he believed that we chose our destiny ourselves before we are born.
This extract is from his ‘Republic’:
“Now, when all the souls had chosen their lives in the order of the lots, they advanced in their turn to Lachesis, who dispatched with each of them the Destiny he had selected, to guard his life and satisfy his choice . . . and in a moment the souls were carried up to their birth, this way and that, like shooting stars.”
I invite you to read more about how my life changed after everything crashed and burned in my book ‘Man Steps Off Planet’.
Best wishes and good fortune.
Neil.
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