230901, 1145hr, illinois time.

first of all, sorry for being so slow with updates here. i don't have an internet connection on my comp anymore, because of some problems with the house server. cw and sidat have been working hard at setting up a new system, i don't really want to pressure them to be faster with it, just so i can sit in my room comfortably typing out my journal entries. so i've been using alvin's computer, and despite them being so nice [ie both alvin and his computer. haha], i just don't feel any inspiration flow when i write from there.

i've been wanting to write about this for some time though. so i should just do it. on my very slow modem connection. i realise what it is that has been bothering me. michael wrote about it here - destiny.

almost everything i wanted to say about it, is there in his entry, what he wrote really shook me, cos that was exactly what i believed in. he wrote it so much better than i would ever be able to. so you should go read it. in view of what happened on 11 september, the whole concept of destiny gets yet another round of analysis in my mind. the terrorists probably thought it to be their destiny, their mission in life, to die for their cause. the victims probably didn't know it would be their last flight, their last day at work, their last time kissing their children or spouse goodbye. such is their destiny, whether it's justified, is not for us to judge. cos we're really just mere humans. i think the biggest problem with mankind is simply that we all think too highly of ourselves. or that might just be cos i was st augustine's city of god just 2 days ago. well. anyway...

when i thought of destiny, i used to see it as people's lives running alongside, not exactly parallel, but at a certain angle. such that when the time comes, their lives will intersect. [yes, i think of it this mathematical way, i'm a geek that way.] if you've not found someone yet, it doesn't mean you will not meet her in the very next moment in your life. in an infinite space-time dimension, there're so many people, so many people come in and out of your lives, there're infinite possibilities. how do you know which is the one? i believe that for the one, your life will not run in a straight line after it intersects with hers. if tragically, you cannot be with her for the rest of the course of your life, the path would also have drastically changed, in an unimaginable way. u would have willed it into a different direction, in trying to merge with hers. there's no preset condition of which person will have such an effect on you, whether he/she is the one, is determined by what happens after you meet.

so in that sense, you cannot just sit back, relax, and wait for it to just happen. all the while wilfully and stubbornly going on about your own path, and expecting it to run like that forever. because there has to be change. there has to be action, a diversion from your own course. part of the change will have to come from your conscious or subconscious decision to act. no one can do that for you. of course, if he/she has always had a similar life to yours, sort of parallel, the change doesn't have to be drastic. maybe that's how people miss out on the decisive intersection, because they did not notice the change, or rather, they did not have to devote that much energy into making such a divergence, and with some sort of roundabout logic, they therefore took it for granted. and they missed it. with this logic, then there's not really just one. because at any other point, any other person could just come in, and depending on what happens from there, he/she would just turn out to be the most important person in your life. then the concept of destiny isn't that deterministic anymore.

when i was into the whole christianity discovery thing, one of the things i always thought about was this: in explaining events that happened, one phrase angel always used was, god has a plan for you. is that true? is everything indeed in control, in His plans? has anyone acted against His will? is there really a certain plan, that you have been following, except you weren't aware that all the decisions that you had made, were already made for you before hand. are the decisions that He made for your therefore always the best choice? He might have the nice big overall picture, but does he have plans for everyone, or just the christians? if there're plans for everyone, then why would he have his children kill one another in the name of another god? if he could only control the people who would accept his plans, ie the christians, then wouldn't there always be a possibility that the non-christians foil his plans? if so, then how would his plans always be the best path for you? mind boggling. or another fantastic scenerio, perhaps there're just an infinite number of dimensions, and your life runs through all the different dimensions, living out in a different way, depending on certain pivotal [or it doesn't even have to be pivotal, just any] moments in your life. this notion is uncannily portrayed in Sliding Doors. if that is so, then what is the place of God?

in whatever that happened at wtc, what is the place of God? i of course don't believe that it's really his job to protect us from all evil. but what was his role in this? was he just sitting back, shaking heads at us little sinful humans? the terrorists probably thought that they were martyrs. the terrorists who failed, foiled by the courageous passengers on flight UA93 - who are the martyrs then? what's good, what's evil? who decides?

i think absolutely not any one, not any human. definitely not George W Bush.

that's why the events that happened have been so confusing to me. intertwined with my lifelong interest in the concept of destiny, religion and justice. it wasn't just about 6000 people dying. i had to ask why. what if. and where...where do we go from here?