[music] as we wander through life,we constantly deal with the issue of fate versus choice.what is fate? what i cannot control. what is choice? what i can control. the ancient romans dealt with thesetwo topics with two goddesses. one goddess was the goddess calledfortuna. fortuna was the goddess of luck, random chance, or fate.she's characterized as being blindfolded, so she can't see where she's goingas she wanders through life. and she has a cornucopia filled withgolden coins, and she randomly throws
the coins out, representing blessings topeople around her. and you know what? you may get a lot of coins, you maynot get any coins. fortuna is luck. fortuna has a wheel. she spins thewheel--it's called the wheel of fortuna. the wheel could say: king...could say: going to be king... could say: used to be king...could say: you get nothing... by the way, the wheel of fortuna--vannawhite did not invent that wheel. this was done a little bit before vanna.well, fortuna represents what we cannotcontrol in life. and you know what? a lot of our life, we can't control.and we waste hours talking about what we
can't control in life... the weather...we talk about the past... we talk about people we can't change. somuch of our lives have been wasted on what we cannot control. another goddessrepresents the opposite side...choice. choice represents what we can control.and if you look at choice, there's a roman goddess called disciplina. disciplinarepresented discipline, education, hard work... the soldiers worshipedthe goddess disciplina when they left, and always kept them ready, kept them ready.and by the way, you can see the us marines--a lot of their mottoes, alot of what they do, came from the romans. and a lot of it was influenced bythat goddess disciplina. well,
disciplina represents what we can change.now, as we wander through life, we tend to attribute success to what? hard work.what about failure? fate, not my fault. a simple way to look at life...fate is a hand of cards we've been dealt, you can't change the hand. whateverthat hand is it is... the past is over, you can't change the past.choice is how we play that hand. destiny is how we play that hand. the famousprime minister nehru, that's what he said. fate: the hand of cards we've been dealt;destiny: how we choose to play the hand. my favorite quote on this topic isfrom robert louis stevenson. he said, life is not really having a good hand,it's playing a poor hand very well.
well, in life whatever hand you'vebeen given at this second in time, you've been given. you can't change thepast, you can't change what's happened. whatever fortuna did or did not dohas very little to do with fairness. a lot of our lives are focused on fate,determinism... the factors we can't control,random chance... what is our choice?how do i play the hand of cards right now? how do i do the best to play the hand i'vebeen given, and make peace with that hand?
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