Do you believe in fate? I do, and I don’t.
I do, because since we live in this material world, we can’t avoid being limited.
I don’t, because life itself is an experience full of unknowns; it is multidimensional and can’t be predicted. Even the limits we feel are there so we can experience more fully, and even fulfill our mission. Let me use an analogy: if life were a game and you started with admin powers, then once all your desires were quickly satisfied, the game would lose its appeal, and we would never be trained or grow.
So with fate, we have to look at it dialectically, and stage by stage.
But the frightening thing is that most people stay at the first level of life, living out of habit, never even thinking about the question of “fate.” Today’s social rules and humanity’s collective unconscious have together shaped a so-called worldly standard of success. Though we are entirely different souls, we all force ourselves into the same mold: good school → good job → good income → house and car → marriage and children. Everything is judged by its returns, relationships are only about advantage, there is no long-term view, work is only for survival — and even when we are fed and clothed, we keep wearing ourselves out from habit, saving up more money than we will probably ever spend. There are no cages in this world, yet we keep flying into the net ourselves, becoming canaries in golden cages, even taking pride in it, and never once asking “why.”
Does this mold have any meaning? I think its meaning exists only before we come of age, letting society help children learn and grow through a scientific, efficient process. But in adult life, once we stand on our own, we can’t rely entirely on past experience, because it represents only the past, not the future. Some people keep working hard to climb higher and higher, until one day they realize they have been climbing a mountain that was never theirs. In this short life we can’t live just to stay alive; that can never fill the abyss inside. We need to live better, and more meaningfully.
Fortunately, as AI enters our lives more and more fully, it is forcing everyone to start thinking: if so much tedious, repetitive work can be done by AI, what should we do in the future?
Only at this point do we enter the second level of life: from passively accepting to actively breaking through, looking for our potential and our mission, and living for ourselves.
Real change begins with asking ourselves: what kind of life do we actually want? The answer won’t come all at once, but at least we have to understand this: our precious lives are surely meant for experiencing a life uniquely our own, not for bowing to other people’s eyes and society’s expectations. Because each of us is born with our own gifts and potential, and this uniqueness can create irreplaceable value for ourselves and others.
One way to find the right direction is through your own past experience: what are you both good at and happy doing, something that gives you a state of flow, that you would stick with even if it didn’t pay? This is very likely tied to your innate gifts and potential, and you can explore the fields around it.
If you want more precision, you can consider anchoring it with your astrological chart and your Five Elements and Eight Characters (Bazi). We usually talk about our Sun sign, but the Sun sign is only the outward self; the Moon sign represents our inner needs, our soul’s memory, even our shadow side.
If a person’s Sun and Moon signs have opposite energies and houses, the mismatch between their behavior and their inner needs causes emotional inner drain. Western astrology can use the Moon sign, together with the Ascendant, the Midheaven and the North Node, to roughly work out the direction the heart longs to grow in. And the Five Elements and Eight Characters of our ancestors’ Eastern metaphysics can offer concrete, practical guidance — what we are good at, and in what way we should pursue our goals.
Combining East and West in this way can save a great deal of trial and error.
There is one idea from the Five Elements I especially love: fame, money and love are all good energies, but they shouldn’t become the goals we pursue and cling to in life. Do well what you ought to do, do it to the utmost, and everything we want will come naturally as a reward. As the saying goes: just do good, and don’t ask about the road ahead.
I am a typical example. Two years ago, in other people’s eyes I was doing quite well, but deep inside I was never happy, had no drive to strive, and often doubted myself — was I just being difficult, all tangled up? So, to find out who I was and what I should do, I went to learn about these things.
In the course of studying and practicing, I could slowly feel my energy rising steadily. I became more accepting and at peace with myself, and more and more able to sense the calm, joyful way of living that comes when words and actions are one.
Because once we reach the second level of life, we begin to take charge of our own lives, to live in our own world as the subject, no longer easily shaken by the objects of the outside world. We pour our time and energy into what we truly long for, what we are both good at and love — and this state actually makes it easier to build up resources and reputation, forming a positive cycle that keeps flowing over the long term.
From the first level to the second, we make the dazzling turn from supporting role to lead. And then we can try, in the role of “director,” to create anew the third level of life.
Everyone’s gifts and mission exist for the soul’s breakthrough and ascension, to become the highest version of ourselves. Once the individual has become whole, we need instead to return to the collective, and from this unique state create better value and meaning for the world. This also matches the stage of self-transcendence in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
Because our hearts are steady, and because everything beyond the main axis of our gifts and mission has been “emptied” — including the fixations of the small self — we can see the world and all things from a wider view, and with a natural attitude of love and tolerance, build deeper connections with others and with nature.
The mark of the third level isn’t achieving some “ultimate goal,” but having a relaxed, free state of mind in daily life. No longer clinging to results, but focusing on practice in the present, taking every experience as nourishment for sculpting our souls.
Slowly we come to feel that time is a kind of space, with nothing to cling to; life is an experience to enjoy to the full, with nothing to regret. In the flow of emotion and love, we quietly practice the Way that is ours alone, until we understand: the truth of life is not a competition, but to protect and bring to bloom our own uniqueness, and to give that one-of-a-kind light to this world.
In the end, by different roads, we all arrive at the same place, and become one again at the finish.
And then we will feel proud of ourselves, because in this short life we composed a brilliant piece of music all our own.
And this world, too, will have fulfilled us in the most complete way.