This work was painted in oil on canvas. It measures about thirty inches square and currently lives in a private collection.
Biologically, we create or own realities. In a sense, how we perceive determines our perceptions. New Age philosophy takes this notion further, holding that we actively choose everything that happens to us, good and bad, even if we're not consciously aware of having made these choices. Many find this idea appealing. But I have mixed feelings about it.
Some moments do seem to be guided by higher powers. Religions explain this with deities. New Age philosophy replaces the deity with the self. I don't find either of these perspectives totally satisfying. The materialist's view, that apprehension of fate amounts to misperception of random events, is barely worth mentioning.
My biggest challenge with both the religious perspective and the New Age one comes from my experience of cluster headaches. I simply can't believe that any god or higher self or whatever would make a plan for me that included a life-destroying neurological disorder. There have been headache attacks that seemed supernaturally awful. But my headaches serve no larger purpose. Given how bad they are, it seems almost unethical to suggest that they might be serving some purpose for someone.
True, my condition has made me resilient and determined. It has also made me selfish and needy. I don't think divine forces negotiated this tradeoff. However, the brutal dietary and lifestyle restrictions imposed on me by cluster headaches are reminiscent of religious cults.
I see biology as the framework through which consciousness interacts with consciousness. Unplanned failures sometimes modify this framework. There are no accidents in the sense that anything can be folded into a larger story. But in a biological sense, accidents happen.
One area in particular where I've perceived the winds of fate most strongly involves people. I've had some strange chance encounters in seemingly random locations with people who are important to my life. I've also dreamed about people I've later met more than once. I assume everybody experiences stuff like this, but not everybody notices.
These and other phenomena can be explained as articulations of a collective unconscious comprised of our individual unconscious minds. I think we use this unconscious space to make appointments with each other for various reasons, such that not all chance encounters are random. So the New Agers may be right that we make unconscious choices about what happens to us. Still, I doubt the proposition that everything's a choice, particularly at the individual level.
We are social creatures. Social groups make choices no individual could or would. If the collective unconscious is all individual consciousnesses, are these consciousnesses arranged into groups with their own agendas? I think they are. And I think these groups wield great influence relative to individuals.
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