Damned if I don’t

"Do you believe in destiny?" I ask the doctor of psychology on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where I have wandered on my quest to see what lies outside of Nebraska. I am down on my luck in love. I have returned the only diamond ring ever given me.

She looks me straight in the eye. I expect her to patiently explain that destiny is a construct of the imagination; a delusion to blunt the disappointment of living an unspectacular life.

"Yes," she says, instead. "Absolutely."

I proceed to tell her my life story, from this point forward.

My destiny lies in China, I say. I go there after I experience great success as a writer and author in the United States. I become a vagabond documentarian in the tradition of my hero, Charles Kuralt. I am eventually imprisoned. It tests every fiber and filament of my mind, body and soul. I emerge as one who walks simultaneously in the physical and spiritual planes.

She calculates my body language. I wonder if I've just cast my lot with those brothers who claim to be Jesus and live in nice, big hospitals.

Where I grew up, girls are destined to get married, have children and grandchildren. Not me. I have recurring dreams of my grown-up self as a serenely centered woman dressed in white robes and emanating light. I neglect to share this with my so-called guidance counselor at the time, but now I am revealing it to a professionally trained rationalist.

We are locked at the eyes. I know instinctively that if she is a resolute rationalist, I will evade institutionalization by saying the China story is merely my desire. This is true, in a way, because everything I do that takes me in a different direction leads to misery, even when it comes with a diamond ring. If she questions the prison part, I will confess to a propensity for martyrdom and my flight of fancy will be dismissed as a subconscious revelation cloaked in metaphor. I will then write her a check for $175 and be more selective of my confidantes in the future.

She is not a resolute rationalist. She is a wise woman who knows that science is puny compared to the unseen powers that rule the universe and provoke the mind. She knows that destiny is a force that fully consumes desire, ordinarily a product of longing and hope. Destiny, like faith, is an inner knowledge that something will be, that it already is, just somewhere else in time. Those entangled in destiny are forever driven by a deep sense of something they must do, pleasant or otherwise. I am delighted, for example, to know it is my destiny to be enlightened, but the jail part sucks. Given a choice, I believe I'd prefer the destiny of being the greatest basketball player of all time.

The doctor of psychology does suggest this story I have carried around in my gut all of my life could be metaphorical, but nonetheless applicable to my future and not some imaginary construct to spice up my otherwise unspectacular life. Prison, she says, can signify being trapped in one's fear. Knowing what a dirty mess that is, barred windows don't seem so bad.

She also tells me to get on with it. If I've had a gut feeling my whole life about doing something, what am I waiting for?

I don't know, I tell her. Maybe I was waiting for someone to come along with a diamond ring and save me from it.

Oh well. Plan B. Mandarin language software.

Monday, February 1, 1999

Copyright 2010 by Deborah McAdams. All Rights Reserved. For Reprint Rights, click here.