YOU ARE THE ARCHITECT OF YOUR OWN FATE

 

YOU ARE THE ARCHITECT OF YOUR OWN FATE

 

A good number of people believe that the book of their  fate is written by some unknowable power in heaven.  This is what the astrologers tell us. So, they write your horoscope.   According to them, our success or failure, prosperity or poverty , happiness or sorrow, fame or obscurity, longevity  or brevity of  life, health or sickness are all  pre-determined in such a way that you cannot alter them.  

 

Astrology is also taught as a subject in educational institutions. Many newspapers publish astrological forecasts on daily and/or  weekly basis.

Whether astrology is a science or not is a controversial matter. The English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744)  says:

 

Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate      

 

Most of us will agree with him. Nobody can know what is going to happen the next moment or the next day or at any other time yet to come. The future is unknowable.  

           

What follows is a great poem written by the American poet Henry Wordsworth Longfellow (1807-1882).

 

Its message is that individuals are the architects of their own fate whatever be its form or shape. They utilise their own natural faculties and  sow as much as they reap.  Their reward is according to the labour and passion,  conscientiously put in any venture undertaken by them. Another related message is that there is nothing insignificant in the world ; the high is as important as the low; and the  small is not isolated from the big; it is rather its helper and supporter. The conception of best and worst is also untenable. Each thing in its place is best.     

 

The whole poem is inspirational and shows the way to touch the top.  Moreover, it is easily intelligible, and the one to be remembered throughout one’s life. What  it demands  is the full utilisation of the qualities of one’s hands, head and heart, not carelessly or half-heartedly, but excellently because one is being watched by gods everywhere. Furthermore, not to use one’s natural faculties to build a beautiful house where God may live in will be a deadly sin.   

 

 

 

The  Text of the Poem

 

All are the architects of Fate,

Working in these walls of Time,

Some with massive deeds and great,

Some with ornaments of rhyme.     

 

 

Nothing useless is, or low;

Each thing in its own place is best;

And what seems but idle show

Strengthens and supports the rest.

 

 

For the structure that we raise,

Time is with materials filled;

Our todays and yesterdays

Are the blocks with which we build.

 

Truly shape and fashion these;

Leave no yawning gaps between.

Think not, because no man sees,

Such things will remain unseen.

 

In the elder days of Art,

Builders wrought with greatest care

Each minute and unseen part;

For the gods see everywhere.

 

Let us do our work as well,

Both the unseen and the seen;

Make the house, where gods may dwell,

Beautiful, entire, and clean.

 

Else our lives are incomplete,

Standing in these walls of time,

Broken stairways where the feet

Stumble as  they seek to climb.

 

Build today, then, strong and sure,

With a firm and ample base;

And ascending and secure

Shall tomorrow find its place.

 

Thus alone can we attain

To those turrets, where the eye

Sees the world as one vast plain,

And one boundless reach of sky.

 

            *********

 

5^th March 2021                                                           G.R.Kanwal