Radishes and Destiny

Every day in my email, I get the dictionary.com word of the day. Recently, they also started sending me a quote of the day. Today's quote is from an Irish dramatist and novelist named Samuel Beckett.


He said, "What do I know of man's destiny? I could tell you more about radishes."



I'm thinking he probably doesn't know much about radishes, seeing as how he is a dramatist / novelist and not a farmer. Especially when you consider that he is Irish and they have mostly potatoes over there. Except, do they still have potatoes since the big potato famine? Whatever, my point is, I really like this quote. No one can really know what's going to happen to them.


You might think you're going to go to class at 8 on a Friday morning only to remember when you arrive at an empty classroom that your class was cancelled.


You might think you're going to get a pedicure in Salt Lake on a Friday afternoon only to wind up in a car accident and miss your appointment.


You might think that you're going to marry someone, and everyone else might think so too, but despite all their references to your amazing chemistry and strong connection with that person, someone better might come along and you might end up loving them and getting engaged before the person you thought you wanted to marry even gets home from their mission.


You might think you have your life all figured out, but in reality, you probably know more about radishes than you know about your own destiny.


And I actually like that a lot. Because then, you find yourself with an extra three hours that you reallyy needed to do homework. And you get to go out to eat with your in-laws and you happen to go to the mall and your sister finds a great sale and buys 3 dresses for $24.03....so at least it was good for someone? And if you had gotten a pedicure that day you might have ended up with a nasty foot fungus because the salon didn't clean out the foot baths very often. And you're totally in love with your fiance and it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, since you are the only one whose opinion really matters in the end.




**Just to clarify: the situations I talk about in this blog are hypothetical. I'm not engaged. :) **


I think if I knew everything that was going to happen to me, I wouldn't really be able to live. How could you love someone you knew you weren't going to end up with? How could you audition for a play if you knew you weren't going to get the part you wanted? Why would you spend two years in a major that you would end up deciding was not the major for you?


And if you didn't love that person, and didn't audition for that play, and didn't spend two years in that major, then who knows what else you would miss out on. Which is why I like this life, because I'm not in charge, and I don't want someone who doesn't know squat about destiny or radishes to be in charge of my life.