The End
Updated: Nov 18, 2020
Albert Einstein once said, “everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.”
How poignant that Einstein, arguably the greatest mind of the 20th century would compare the human’s control over its destiny, its origin and its end, to that of an inconsequential insect. Did he mean that the human existence, the most evolved of God’s creatures, is as irrelevant as that of a teeny, tiny bug?
Perhaps more than ever, Einstein’s insight into the working of the universe is most relevant, in a time of fear, uncertainly and disarray. A time that we are forced to navigate unchartered territory, face a new reality, and create a new norm for ourselves and our loved ones.
Why is this so?
Let’s think what has been the number one question that we have all been asking ourselves these past weeks.
When will this all end?
Einstein was correct that like the fly, we have no control over our beginning and our end. But unlike that fly, we, as humans, have control over our minds, our actions, and certainly, over what happens between those two points. We may not choose when we are born and when we die. But we have every chance, every day to control our responses to the trials, successes, failures, and disappointments that we face.
The truth is we each possess within our God given gifts, the forces and power to create the life that we want. We each possess the power to stretch beyond our wildest imaginations to the make the most astonishing and impossible dreams come true.
So perhaps the questions that we should be asking is not “When is the end?” rather, “What can I do today to give meaning to that end, when it does come?”
Because unlike god’s other creatures, we have the power to not be defined by the occasion of our birth and the finality of our death.
We have the chance to be the true masters of our own fate, because it is has been weaved into our nature.