Fate

My host-mother, Katya, introduced me to a new Russian word – больтушка (baltyushka), which basically means a very talkative person. I think it's a bit of a derogatory term, but she uses it to describe herself. I have to agree, the woman likes to talk, but I enjoy it, and have dubbed her "my good baltushka."

Recently, our conversations have turned to fate. A lot of the people here believe in checking horoscopes, getting palms read, the evil eye, karma, and just a general feeling that what goes around comes around. Katya has told me numerous stories about how some neighbor did something bad, and several years her family hasn't had any children; or how another person didn't heed the warning in the horoscope and died. It's almost that in her mind, for every (metaphysical) action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

While this might be true for the next life – commit a murder now and you'll pay for it on Judgement Day – I don't agree with Katya's view for this earth. Bad things happen to good people, and vice versa. Priests get in car accidents, child molesters win the lottery. One's degree of piety or baseness won't protect or expose you to all the good and bad fortunes of chance.

To some degree, everything on the planet shares a cause-effect relationship; the wings of a butterfly in China may have contributed to the formation of Hurricane Katrina. But I would hardly blame that butterfly for the havoc wreaked in New Orleans, just as I would hardly blame a slight to a neighbor for the death of a relative 10 years later. I guess it just depends on how far down the "interconnectivity" road you want to go.

Having thus agreed to disagree, Katya and I moved on to foretelling the future. I told her that I don't believe in the ability of any mortal to divine it, specifically that palm reading was a crock. Nearly all attempts to do so are very general and mysterious – "You are entering a period of great difficulty now…" or "You will soon find a new business opportunity." No one ever says, "On Tuesday your car will get a flat tire on the rear passenger side." And why don't they? Because then their predictions wouldn't come true and they would be exposed as frauds. But give a general reading, and almost everyone can claim that to some degree the prediction was correct. I mean, who isn't in a period of difficulty?

Why the difference in Katya's point of view and my own? Undoubtedly, part of it is just that we're different people. I'm sure that in America I could easily find those with a similar outlook to Katya's. But I think that part of it – and I admit that this argument is a bit of a stretch – is that I am in more control of my future than my host-mother. As an American from an upper-middle class, white, loving family, who is about to enter a prestigious business school, my future seems fairly positive. Upon graduation, it's likely that I'll get a decent-paying job and will be able to raise a family of my own. Compare that with Katya's options: some of her children have had to work abroad to make ends meet; she has seen the collapse of her government; it would probably be very difficult for her to find another job should she lose or quit her current one. If I were in Katya's position, I too might be more inclined to see the cause of bad events as fate, instead of poor nutrition, lack of economic opportunity, or the results of an corrupt government. It's easier on the psyche to lay the blame at some mysterious and unstoppable supernatural force than on things that are caused by others around us or, to some degree, are of one's own making.

Part of the reason for our different views might also be a generational shift. I speculate on this because, through an extremely non-scientific process which involved asking one other young person, I can without a doubt state that two young people in the village of Copceac that that palm-reading and future-divining is "bullshit." Maybe we young'ns are just so full of piss and vinegar that we want to believe that we are invincible masters of our own destiny, and fate has no control over our lives.

Switching topics. Since my birthday was last week and someone has been clamoring in the comments section of this blog for me to post reflections on being 28-years old, here goes… I still feel relatively young, compared to the general population, but this is the first time I've ever felt "old." At 28, one can no longer claim to be in one's mid-20s. I'm definitely on the downhill slope to the big three-oh. And 3-0 is exactly how old I'll be by the time I finish business school and start working. I had always pictured myself a little ahead of that curve, finishing with graduate school and embarking on a career around 26 or 27. Nonetheless, I feel pretty good about where I am – college grad, fulfilling work experiences, really good looking – and where I'm going. Actually, though I couldn't nail down exactly what kind of career I want or where I want to live, I feel as though my life has more direction and I am more clear about my personal and professional goals than I have ever been. I think that's one benefit that comes from working at and living in a few different places since graduating college, and from spending countless hours writing graduate school applications, all of which ask "What are your career goals?"

As far as any wisdom I've accrued in my 28 years…

1. Change is hard, but necessary.
2. Travel to distant places and new cultures almost always benefits both sides.
3. It's the economy, stupid.
4. Friendship is best displayed during the breakfast scene in Wedding Crashers [minus the whole undercurrent of disingenuousness that goes with falsely representing oneself at a wedding to which you were not invited in order to bang an attractive woman]