Trust Your Destiny

In a meeting at my paying job last week, a senior executive told us about a business owner in an adjacent industry who sent an e-mail to all his customers, informing them of a 25% price increase due to Trump’s new tariffs. And then he had to send another e-mail saying “never mind” after Trump backtracked. The story was told to emphasize that 1) this is not how we intend to manage tariffs, and 2) this is not how we should communicate with customers who are understandably anxious.

One of the functions of law and government is to promote stability. It’s hard to plan and invest for the future – either in our businesses or as individuals – when the legal and political environments can change on a whim. Conservatives used to recognize this and argue that major changes should be slow and deliberate. What we have now is government of chaos, by chaos, for chaos.

This chaos makes planning for the future difficult. The more fragile and vulnerable your finances and other support systems, the more likely it is that your life will be significantly disrupted in all that’s coming.

And yet we have to keep moving or we’ll never get where we want to be in life.

I have some very specific places I want to be in the next few years: some geographical, some spiritual, and some financial. I have a plan to get there, and I cannot and will not allow political chaos to stop me.

To help me do that, I need all the information I can get. Last week I did readings with two different Tarot decks, both asking the question “show me the most advantageous route from here to there.” No cards were duplicated between the readings, but both of them said the same things:

• Keep following your path, especially your deep spiritual work.
• You will have distractions and intrusions. Ignore them, or at least, minimize them.
• The final outcome is not fixed, but it is certain. Trust your destiny.

The destiny we make

Destiny, fate, fortune. What will be.

Let me be very clear about one thing: I do not believe in preordained destinies. I do not believe in “soul contracts” or that we choose everything that happens to us in this life. That concept is a lazy way for people to feel good about themselves and to absolve themselves from any obligation to help those whose lives aren’t as privileged as their own. It’s bad metaphysics and it’s worse politics.

Much of our destiny is environmental: when and where we’re born, who our family is, who we run into throughout our lives. We’re born with differing levels of health, physical ability, intelligence, and magical talent. What is naturally easy for some is difficult for others and impossible for a few.

But our lives are also impacted by the choices we make. There are the big choices: what to study in school, and how to finance our education. Who to marry, whether to marry, when to decide a marriage is over. Whether or not to have children.

Then there are the small choices that seem insignificant but that add up over time. Whether to prioritize studying or watching TV is no big deal, one time. Over the course of a semester, it makes the difference in a grade. Over the course of the high school years, it makes the difference in what programs you can or can’t get into, whether you can do the work when you get into them, and what kind of job opportunities you have when you graduate.

You can be born with all the athletic talent in the world, but if you don’t practice and train you’ll never be a champion. The same is true of musicians, visual artists, writers, and anyone else who practices a craft. Ray Bradbury’s adage that “everyone’s first million words are crap” is true – you can read this blog and tell I hit a million words somewhere in the 2011 time frame.

Our choices over time become part of our destiny.

And at some point, the destiny we build becomes more powerful than any agent of chaos.

Years of spiritual practice have created a destiny

The cards did not tell me that everything will work out fine.

They said nothing about the kind of house I can afford when I move. They said nothing about whether I can travel as much as I want, or occasionally, or not at all. They didn’t say whether I’ll ever write that elusive third book (five years ago I said there was a 70% chance I would – I think those are still good odds) or if I’ll be able to do some of the physically demanding things I want to do in retirement.

The cards said my destiny is certain.

They said that my years of spiritual practice, of composing and leading rituals, of working magic, and of writing about all that I do were so far along that it would take something like getting struck and killed by lightning to keep me from reaching my destiny of being the Druid, priest, and witch I want to be. Which is to says, someone who is and does what I am and do now, only more.

The path you’re on is taking you somewhere

I’m writing a lot for myself these days, and this post – and especially the Tarot readings that inspired it – is definitely for me.

But once again what’s true for me is likely true for you as well, to one degree or another.

Keep following your path, especially your spiritual work.   Do your best to eliminate or minimize the things that distract you from what’s most important to you. And trust your destiny.

Trust that the work you’ve done over the past two, five, twenty years is taking you and will continue to take you where you want to go.

But what if you don’t have twenty years on this path? What if you’re not even twenty years old?

Then you still have time to choose your destiny and to build it, day by day, month by month, year by year.

And what if you don’t like the destiny you’ve built?

Then start changing it now.

This won’t be easy. The older you are, the harder it is to change, and the less time you have to change it. But also, the older you are the more urgent it is that you make the changes you want to make as quickly as you can. Your soul may be immortal (I believe it is) but this life is limited. Don’t waste any of your precious years following a path that doesn’t call to you, that doesn’t fulfill you.

The path you’re on is taking you somewhere. If you like where you’re going, stay on it. If you don’t, change directions – now.

Action in the face of chaos

I am a creature of order. I like goals and plans and actions that support them. The more things get chaotic, the more planning I do. I can’t control the world, but I can control me… more or less.

That’s what I hated most about 2017-2021 – waking up every morning wondering what ridiculous and harmful thing had been done overnight. 2025-2029 is starting out with a blitzkrieg that disrupts my life even when I’m not directly affected. And it makes it harder to plan and act for the future I want.

But the work I’ve done over the course of my life has brought me here. And I trust that if I continue doing the work, I’ll continue moving down the path.

And so will you.