
28 Nov To me destiny is not about the place you end up but the path that you are on. (JOHN IZZO)
Similar to our concept of destiny, destina concerns the idea that each one of us has a true path that we were born to take. Rather than being fatalistic (as in she was destined to be the president or he was destined to fail), it is more akin to the Sanskrit idea of Dharma, according to which each one of us has a true essence.
Other words have been used to describe this idea, such as “following your bliss,” which I mentioned earlier. These are all different ways of saying the same thing—that each one of us has a path most true to us, and when we follow that path we find contentment. But what does it mean to follow our heart and, more importantly, how do we know when we are doing so?
“Following your heart” means many things: It means doing work that suits your deepest interests; being true to yourself in the kind of life you choose (and honest about what you want); and taking time to hear the small, inner voice that tells you if you are missing the mark of your deepest desires.
William, 73, is an author, a researcher, and an advisor to people on life transition. He told me that much of his own sense of happiness had come from knowing he was being true to self. “I have found most of my purpose in a sense of destiny. To me destiny is not about the place you end up but the path that you are on. Each of us is born with a path we are meant to follow, not a place we will end up, but rather a certain set of experiences I am meant to have while I am here.” He went on and talked about how there had been many times when he experienced strong feelings of being in his destiny, such as when “I was four years old and lying in the grass watching the ants and seeing that they were living on a different scale than I was, and I had this great sense of mystery trying to figure it out. I knew that trying to figure things out was part of my destiny. When I have had such moment the sky did not turn a funny color, but it is just as firm as if it was God-given.”
Tom was in his sixties when I interviewed him. He is a Metis native who grew up on the prairie of Western Canada. The Metis are a tribe descended from native people in Canada who married French traders. When he was 13, he had an experience that changed his life. This was not an uncommon experience among the people I interviewed. Many of them could point to a seminal moment in their lives when they recognized who they truly are and why they are here.
As young teenagers, Tom and some of his friends used to love to skate on a large lake on the reservation. In the early days of winter in his fourteenth year, he and some friends headed out for a day of skating. Before they left the village, some of the elders warned them that the lake was not fully frozen, but with the invincibility of youth they ignored the warnings. “We headed out past a place they called Big Island and skated most of the afternoon. I remember on the way out we passed over a large crack in the ice, a crack which appeared each year, so we did not think much of it.”
As the daylight started to fade the four teenage boys headed back to the village. When they came to the crack in the ice, Tom’s three friends crossed gingerly over the crack, but Tom held back. Yelling to his friends to watch, he skated with all his might and leaped over the crack, but as he landed the ice broke underneath him. Suddenly he was in the frozen lake, beneath the surface of the frigid water. He looked up and swam toward the hole through which he had fallen. Grasping at the ice, he yelled to his friends for help. One by one they tried to come to his aid, but each time he tried to climb up on the ice, it broke apart around him forcing him back into a frigid nightmare.
Weary and shivering, he watched as one by one his friends began to run to the village to seek help. Grasping at the ice one last time, he saw the last of his three friends turn to leave. Tom sank beneath the cold waters. He could feel his life slipping away from him. Looking up he saw only darkness, having lost sight of the hole in the ice.
“I realized I was going to die. For some reason all I could think about in that moment were the trees that lined the lake. They were aspen trees, and my people called them trembling aspens because they have tiny leaves which fl utter in the wind so that the entire forest appears to be trembling. As I began to feel my life slip away, all I could think about were the trembling aspens and how I would never get to see them again. About to give up, I felt the trees calling me and looked up one last time only to find a perfect round hole in the ice that had not been there the moment before. Reaching up I grabbed the ice and it held. I could see my last friend just within earshot and I yelled for him to help. He came back and held out his coat and dragged me to safety.”
At the time, he was simply grateful to be alive. Soon after he began to wonder about the experience:
“I kept wondering why I thought about the trees as I was dying. Why did I not think about my family, my parents or my grandparents? All I could think about were the trees, these trembling aspens, and that I would not get to see them again. It was a mystery that haunted me for many years.”
Almost 20 years later he shared the story with a medicine woman, a healer. She told him that the trees had saved him because it was his destiny to lead the ceremonies. In his tribe, the aspen trees were a central part of certain sacred ceremonies. The medicine woman told him: “You were born to be a healer.” Tom realized that all of his life he had felt the calling to be a spiritual leader but had resisted the inklings. In that moment he saw his destina, his true path. When he became a leader of the ceremonies, he was given his “spiritual” name: White Standing Buffalo. Since that time, for the last 30 years, White Standing Buffalo has found his deepest sense of purpose in leading the dances and being a spiritual guide. He continued to make his living doing other things, but leading the ceremonies, and being a guide to others, became the true source of his meaning.
It seems to me that each one of us has a trembling aspen on the lake of our lives, something that is most true to us. When we heed the sound of these yearnings we find happiness and purpose; when we ignore them we feel a hole in our hearts like the hole in that frozen lake that cannot be filled. We grasp at happiness, and each time it breaks apart in our hands like the thin ice of that frozen lake. For some people, that true path is revealed as it was for Tom in one experience, but for many of us the process of discovering who we are is much more subtle and happens over time.
When I decided to conduct the interviews with people about their lives, one of the people who immediately came to mind in my own life was Bob (who was just shy of 60). In the previous chapter, I related how Bob had worked for many years with aboriginal peoples and that one of the female elders had told him that “if you were one of our people, you would be an elder.” He told me it was the greatest compliment he had ever received.
There were many facts I knew about Bob’s life, but the interview revealed an inner journey that illustrated what happens when you are true to yourself. His mother had been a bird watcher and his father a gardener. When he was a young boy, they gave him two choices for his free time. “They told me I could go outside and play in nature, or I could go upstairs and read books, so I did both. He spent his time wandering out in nature, observing wildlife, especially birds. In his room he read books on nature and birds. From a very young age he felt most at home outdoors. The natural world fascinated him and gave him great joy. When he was about ten, he announced one day to his mother that he was going to “become a biologist,” though he admits now that he probably had little idea what a biologist was.
He followed his instincts. Though he has worked in government, in the nonprofit sector and as a volunteer, the common thread has been wilderness. He looks back now with great satisfaction at his lifelong work fighting to preserve wild places. From the beginning it was nature, and being in it, that was his trembling aspen.
Sometimes it can be a gift to see the consequences of not being true to yourself early in life. Bob’s father had been a respected anesthesiologist, and when Bob was in his twenties, the hospital had a celebration for his father’s 20,000th anesthesiology procedure. On the way home from the party, Bob asked his father what it was like to celebrate all those years of being a physician. His father replied: “I would rather have been an accountant. You know, son, what I enjoyed most about being a doctor was keeping my own books.” It was a great shock to learn that his father had not followed his heart. He spent his days practicing medicine, but it was in keeping the financial books of his practice where he lost track of time. “I decided in that moment that if someone asked me what I felt about being an X, I would not say I would rather have . . .” This image haunted Bob, and he has stayed true to his pledge.
His life also illustrates the importance of knowing one’s self beyond choice of career, of how this idea of living with intention and knowing one’s self is such an important secret. For many years I wondered why Bob and Mary had no children, but out of politeness I never asked about it. It occurred to me that perhaps a medical problem had made having children an impossibility, and I did not wish to inflict any unnecessary emotional pain on them. When I interviewed Bob he said: “Mary and I are childless by choice, you know. Early in our relationship I told her that if we had children she would be on her own. My path was my work, and I did not want children to impede the work I knew I was called to do, which was protecting nature. Mary felt the same way, and we made that choice together.”
Prescriptions for a happy life, when they involve some prescribed elements necessary for happiness, are rarely useful. I interviewed people who were called to be mothers or fathers; this was their truest path, and following that path had made them very happy. My wife Leslie is one of those people; she is naturally a caregiver, and both in the family and in her work as a nurse she followed her true path. If she had not had children she would not have been living her destina. But for others, like Bob, the opposite was true. Through reflection and listening to the inner voices of his own heart, he knew he was not meant to have children.
Following our hearts requires courage
Following our hearts may involve quieting other voices that may want us to follow their dream
THE FIVE SECRETS YOU MUST DISCOVER BEFORE YOU DIE”
JOHN IZZO