At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old fella, enraging aspects of modern life are increasing at an alarming rate.
For your eyes, amusement and mental well-being, I outline a few of these concerns to help us decide and design our own destiny.
Everyone is responsible for their own destiny.
English poet and writer William Shakespeare couldn’t say it any better when he opined: “It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”
Even God the almighty—call him Allah, Jehovah or Jah if you want—only helps those who help themselves.
You can pray and fast all you want, you and your prayer will not be answered if you do not do anything pragmatic to help yourself.
I am about 40 percent grumpy, 60 percent old and 100 percent a jolly good fella.
Life is not always going to be roses and rainbows. Uncomfortable moments are part of life.
However, it is what we do with those moments that count and determine our destiny as people and a nation.
We can control our destiny, but not our fate. Destiny, to me, means there are opportunities to turn right or left, but fate is just a one-way traffic street.
I accept that we all have a choice whether to fulfil our destiny, but our fate is downright sealed.
There is a lot we can do to change what we do not like and modify it to our liking, but we leave fate in God’s hands.
Our character is our destiny.
Our daily lives are like drama at the theatre. We are the protagonist and others take the roles of parents, friends, lovers and foes.
But who are we backstage?
When the curtain falls and death strikes, what becomes of us and everyone who played a role in our theatrical play?
Backstage, we have accepted our unenviable status as one of the poorest countries and we waste time believing we would be better in 2063 when most of us, including the strategists behind the Malawi2063 agenda, will be dead.
For now, we happily wallow in abject poverty.
However, we mortgaged our destiny the moment we accepted that ours is a poor country.
In As You Like It, Shakespeare rightly observes: “All the world’s stage.”
The world’s stage where we must serve the desires of others and seek to fulfil our own.
Like any drama, our lives are divided into scenes and acts. How we choose to play each scene shapes our destiny—our future scenes.
Each scene contains life-changing lessons from the action-reaction cycles of karma, the universal law from which none of us are exempt.
Karma reminds us that we are responsible for our actions and reincarnation indicates that this responsibility does not end with the death of the body.
This cosmic education teaches us why bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people.
Ultimately, it should awaken us to the truth of ourselves as souls and our relationship with the world around us.
Karmic lessons move us closer to the eternal, unchanging, self-evident, blissful and personal nature of the soul and relationship with our source.
Destiny is not a matter of chance, but choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, but to be achieved for our life has meaning.
As a nation, fellow Malawians, it is time we stopped playing victims and roll our sleeves up and get down to work.
Roy Bennette once opined: “You are not the victim of the world, but rather the master of your own destiny. It is your choices and decisions that determine your destiny.”
As we prepare for next year’s general elections, let us take control of our destiny by voting into power people that have the best intentions for the country. Let us not use emotions when deciding important matters, including the future of Mother Malawi.
If we do not control our destiny, someone else will.
