5-23-13 RMB Fate and Free Will

5-23-13 RMB Fate and Free Will 

Dear Rita Mae Brown,

Words from High Hearts struck a chord “In highly intuitive beings, fate and free will are the same thing.”

For years, I have been adding quotes to the ends of my emails to clients, friends and associates. There are websites and books that I draw from. I notice the many attributed to Rita Mae Brown. When I began reading your books I realized that the quotes were often taken from those books, not necessarily something you ever said, but something you relayed in telling a story or through a character.

I prefer knowing if a quote is coming from a certain work, a book, movie, etc., than to think in error that the words were said by an individual in the living of their own life. I wonder how or if it has affected you, that the world has taken your words and shared them without any credit to their origin noted.

True, they are your words, but knowing what I know now, seeing them in print, sheds a different light on their meaning. A writer is the creator of their characters, but the characters are not replicas of the writer.

I believe you are highly intuitive. Do you feel that fate and free will are the same thing?

It seems like a plausible theory, but in my experience, when put into practice, the two mix like oil and water. Maybe I am intuitive, but not quite “highly intuitive”.

In the last relationship I knew something was amiss before the final train wreck that ended us. Many days and nights I sat and stared out at the sky, the landscape and the stars. I did not see how I could fix our issues, couldn’t even define the issues, just felt them simmering.

Harder still was the time I felt a death was coming. I had no clue who it was nor what on earth I could do about it. I could define the person, a woman, older than I, a relative of someone I knew, but not a relative of my own. It was not someone close to me, but I would know when it happened. I carried it for about a week. Then I got a call from one of my clients, someone I spoke with often.

There was something different in her voice. She was not her assertive self. We had a friendly working relationship. I asked her “Are you okay? Do you need to talk? It can be off the record you know.”

She paused and sighed, “My mother just died. She was ill and this last week has been hard.”

I set down my pen, leaned back in my chair and listened until she was all talked out. She thanked me; didn’t have anyone else to unload on like that. I wished I could put down the phone, drive to her and hold her, but she lived at the other end of the state and besides, we were not friends. I was just the tool used to lend another human being relief when someone upstairs knew she would need it most.

There are too many instances to note where I knew something, but not enough to change fate. It’s a game of catch where you see the ball coming and all you can do is to be there to catch it, I can’t change its course, velocity, nor its very existence. I do my best to be ready…with an open mitt.

Yours truly,

Loraine