Cruel Fate, or Nah?

Thank Atropos It's Friday!

"This is how it's supposed to be. Says so right here in my book, fool."

The Wrong Fork

Officially, the Catholic Church believes both in predestination (what some people
call Fate), and in free will. Regarding the alleged incompatibility of those beliefs, I have always been a Thomist, which means I don't believe the loss I have recently suffered was brought about by anything other than my own errors. As has been the case with previous mistakes of this kind, the path I should have chosen is now clear to me. But as has also been the case with those previous heartbreaks, I shall not be allowed a second opportunity to choose.

My current misery is not "fate," but a product of my own catastrophically defective judgment at a critical moment...

"You can only control so much of what happens in life..."

'Control' isn't the point...this disastrous turn of events is entirely my fault...

Make Up Your Mind

From the inimitable comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson, sadly missed in my daily morning reading.

Until Next Time...

There was a fair amount of silliness in the '60s concerning the role of Fate (or Destiny) in human affairs. I knew a large number of people who were deeply into astrology in those days, for instance, and since a couple of them were cute girls I desired to date,
I sometimes pretended I bought into that nonsense as well. It was also the age of Carlos Castaneda, Timothy Leary, and others arguing for the use of drugs to achieve
a higher level of consciousness, discover hidden dimensions, etc. I never indulged in drugs (aside from alcohol), and I much preferred Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas
to the best-sellers of the day like Alan Watts and Erich von Däniken.

As silly as the '60s were, they did produce some of my all-time favorite music, and as the blog winds down you may expect to see some more of my favorites from that era squeezed in under the wire. The true gems of that time period are as much a part of who I am as anything else about me.

One of those '60s gems is "Time Has Come Today," by the "psychedelic" soul-rock fusion group The Chambers Brothers. Released in December 1967, it was their biggest chart success, reaching No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 and driving sales of the band's album The Time Has Come to No. 4 on the Billboard 200. The full-length version featured here was only played on FM stations, of course, but edited versions were all over Top 40 radio at the time. Since then, the song has been featured in dozens of movies and TV programs, including an episode of Supernatural, one of my all-time favorite shows. Here the music is paired with a video montage of the band and some weird visual effects typical of the era.

Musical nostalgia aside, the song's lyrics are also on point for me right now, especially the lines about being "put aside" and "crushed by the tumbling tide"...