I have become a firm believer in destiny and how major events of our lives have been pre-ordained. If it is meant to happen, happen it will. So many events in my life have proved to be culminations of events past or inception of events future.
Things have to happen, for things to happen. A term I am often reminded of.
How, what, or who makes these pre-ordained events happen? If we are supposed to be at a particular juncture of our life, who or what makes it so?
Haruki Murakami tries to delve into this in the following lines from his book, Kafka on the Shore, in a conversation between two charachters; one of which is portrayed as the 'representation', who or which makes the things happen for things to happen.
"..Shape I may take, converse I may, but neither god nor Buddha am I, rather an insensate being whose heart thus differs from that of man....Neither god nor Buddha, just an insensate. As such, of the good and bad of man I neither inquire nor follow"
..I'm appearing here in human form, but I'm neither god nor Buddha. My heart works differently from humans' hearts because I don't have any feelings. That's what it means..
..Since I'm neither god nor Buddha, I don't need to judge whether people are good or evil. Like wise I don't have to act according to standards of good or evil...I'm not beyond good and evil, exactly -- they just don't matter to me. I have no idea what's good or what's evil. I'm a very pragmatic being. A neutral object, as it were, and all I care about is consummating the function I've been given to perform...
I'm kind of an overseer, supervising something to make sure it fulfills it's original role. Checking the correlation between different worlds, making sure things are in the right order. So results follow causes and meanings don't get mixed up. So the past comes before the present, the future after it. Things can get a little out of order, that's okay. Nothing's perfect. If the account book's basically in balance, though, that's fine with me.
[Haruki Murakami] in [Kafka on the Shore]
Review by [Charles Taylor]
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