"Fate
Up against your will
Through the thick and thin
He will wait until
You give yourself to him"
-Echo & The Bunnymen, "The Killing Moon"
Last night I went to an Echo & The Bunnymen concert with my dad and brother. For those of you who don’t know, Echo & The Bunnymen is a band that started in the 80’s and grew an incredible cult following. The concert last night was packed with concert-goers of all ages. Lead singer Ian McCulloch still sounds incredible, and lead guitarist Will Sergeant still has one of the best tones of any guitarist out there. We try to get to a Bunnymen show whenever they are in town, and they never disappoint.
Echo & The Bunnymen have a bunch of great songs (“Lips Like Sugar,” “Bring On The Dancing Horses,” “The Cutter”); however, their most popular song, “The Killing Moon,” speaks to my soul in a way that very few songs do. It has an extraordinarily powerful chorus that opens with the line, “Fate, up against your will,” and that short phrase sparks enough inside of me to write a whole damn article.
Fate vs. Will. The never-ending battle of human existence. There are so many things we want - a good job, a high salary, a hot wife, a house, a family, the list goes on. What we get, though, is a whole different story. This reminds me of that old phrase I used to hear as a kid - you get what you get and you don’t get upset. Often times, that’s a lot more difficult to practice than to preach. There are so many things we want, but ultimately Fate decides what we receive. This brings up many questions, and many different trains of thought.
First, let’s talk about Will. Why do we want things? Why do we have desires? I don’t think the “why” really matters. Theologians of different faiths will have different answers for you (i.e. The “Fall of Man”). At the end of the day, its origins won’t help us figure out what to do with it. What matters is that we all have desires, and we set so much of our happiness on the fulfillment of those desires. We want all the “things,” and when we don’t get them we get depressed, angry, fearful. Let’s take a look at what the Dao de Jing has to say about desire:
Freed from desire, you can see the hidden mystery. By having desire, you can only see what is visibly real.
Preferring simplicity and freedom from desires, Avoiding the pitfalls of knowledge and wrong action.
Embrace simplicity. Put others first. Desire little.
Those whose desires are few gets them, Those whose desires are great go astray.
Since it is without wants and desires, It can be considered humble.
By the power of the Uncarved Block, Future generations would loose their selfish desires. By loosing their selfish desires, The world would naturally settle into peace.
There is no greater transgression than condoning peoples selfish desires.
The Master desires no possessions, Since the things she does are for the people.
I think you get the point. Desires inevitably leads us to pain. We can try to rationalize or justify our way out of this, but in my experience, it always holds true. That’s because of the force that’s endlessly working in opposition to desire: Fate.
The thing about Fate is, we can’t control it (well, that’s not totally true, but I’ll save my ideas on New Thought and manifestation for a separate article). If you think you have control of Fate, take a trip to the beach. Stand on the shore, and do your best to try and stop the waves. Point is, no matter how much you think or try to position yourself in the best way possible, you can’t. They will continue to break despite anything you do. Fate operates in the same way - we are, in so many ways, powerless over it.
What exactly does that mean? It certainly doesn’t mean we should just throw in the towel. We can’t control the forces of the universe, but we can do everything we can to influence the flow of our lives in a positive direction. This brings me back to “The Butterfly Effect”. Every action reverberates into the future, affecting each subsequent action throughout our lifetimes. In recovery, our solution to this is what we call the “Next Right Action”. This doesn’t mean trying to control our fate, but it does often mean controlling our desires. Have you ever done something out of desire that has come back to haunt you years later in a seemingly unrelated way? I have, and in different scenarios I’ve been both the haunted and the haunter. The Next Right Action is a way to prevent this, and it’s easy to do - we all know in our gut whether something is right or wrong for us.
The truth is, the battle between Fate and Will is more like a dance. There’s nothing wrong with wanting things for ourselves as long as they don’t hurt others; however, a careful inventory of our desires may lead to a realization that much of what we desire could very easily hurt other people. Often times we’re just not conscious of it. The key to all this is whether or not what we want comes from a place of selfishness or selflessness. To quote Jack Johnson, a “me first, gimme gimme appetite” is bound to lead us to pain. It might not be today. It might not be tomorrow; however, Karma (a close cousin to Fate) has a way of showing up when we least expect it, and when we least want it to.
I find the final lines of “The Killing Moon” chorus to be a very subtle hint at what I have found to be the solution to the problem of Fate vs. Will - “He will wait until you give yourself to him.” Who is “him”? I like to think it should be a capitalized “H”. All of a sudden these semi-sexual lyrics represent something much greater. For me, the answer is always Him - Higher Power, God, Her if you so choose. Being in constant communication with my Higher Power enables me to find out what I really want. It enables me to wrestle with my own selfishness, and check myself if my ego is getting too big. Most of all, it enables me to get comfortable with Fate, however she may play out. Knowing I have a force of infinite love behind me is true freedom. Whatever happens, I know in the bottom of my heart I will be taken care of. That may not look like I want it to look, but I know it will always be what I need rather than what I want.
To quote my sponsor, “God isn’t going anywhere.” Remember that always. If there’s a force greater than you that you’re able to connect with (whether that’s Jesus, Buddha, the Sun, the Stars, it doesn’t matter), know that it’s not going to leave your side. There are much greater things at work than we will ever know.
Trust. Have faith. Breathe.