They say that fate is a tapestry. Three women upon a loom, our lives the complex threads of a grandiose picture.
This is a lie.
It is meant to pacify us, to soothe us. It tells us that we are part of something important, that we are the integral materials of a great work of beauty that is being forged by something larger than ourselves. It tricks us into a feeling of complacency. ‘Do not struggle’, says the spider to the fly, ‘you are where you are meant to be’.
Fate is not the weavers. Fate is the strings. A messy creature of multicoloured thread that spins traps around us, whispers of kismet and dharama to lull us into lethargy, pretty colours splashed onto an empty canvas to distract us from the meaninglessness beyond.
We are prisoners of fate, our naked bodies pinioned; here by the green threads of privilege, there by the fiery bursts of divine right.
Do not lie back in your hammock of silk and believe yourself rocked by the womb of fate! You are but a morsel, an entertainment, waiting like sheep to be devoured by the farmer. Stand up! Fight back! Do not be the fly, buzzing in unending loops and circles to nowhere. Be the cat that stalks the spider, the bird that swallows her down. Rip the threads from your tender flesh and declare yourself the arbitrator of your own choices! Be, for once, alive.
Image by April Milne