Destiny Calling, Fate Beckoning (Old Topic Reposted)

Okay, so maybe this post has a little melodramatic overtone than my usual "lighter side" blogs. Pardon me, I was just feeling a bit whimsical......and most thankful.

It was one of my earlier works on my old Friendster blogsite and was first published on September 7, 2007. I have scratched out my endless ramblings and tweaked it a bit (in blue).

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I’ve learnt to believe that there is no such thing as destiny or fate or the way that some people visualize these two things. You make the choices and the consequences become your destiny or fate. Although…I still believe everything happens for a reason. It’s kind of weird because the one belief does not really support the other very well. If something is not destined for you, then what is the reason that it happens to you? I cannot fully explain this cycle, but I stand firmly between these two beliefs. There will always be things happening to you (because they happen to you for a reason), but you have that choice to turn that situation into something good or bad, great or crap.

A few years ago [(about 3 and a half years to be exact) now it is more than 6 years and counting], I was involved in a very bad car accident. I was driving home from work one afternoon and whilst making a right turn at a robot (stoplight), a taxi (mini-bus) came from the other side and hit my car on the passenger side. The taxi was trying to beat the red light and in doing so, came hurtling down from the other side of the road whilst I was already making my turn. I was hit and my car spun. I lost consciousness and only regained it when the paramedic woke me. I suffered temporary memory loss. I actually thought I had fallen asleep while driving. It was quite bad but it could have been much worse. I was not driving my usual car as it was in for repairs. I was driving my husband’s car, a bakkie (1-ton pickup) at that time and if it weren’t for the size of that car, there would have been no protection at all. The impact was hard; the bakkie was a write-off afterwards. Imagine if I had been driving my small car then, I would have smashed upside down and broken every bone in my body.

Upon waking up, I also found out that my right leg and knee were in terrible pain, “broken” according to the paramedic. My husband arrived at the scene and the paramedics transferred me to the ambulance and took me to the public hospital. Service at the public hospital was something to be desired. I was very lucky that my local GP was in the same hospital delivering a baby at that same time. He had a look at me after the delivery and advised that I needed to be seen by a specialist. I was then transferred to a private hospital.

I remember arriving at the private hospital just after midnight, thinking while waiting for the specialist to arrive, that I was lucky "I always wear clean underwear everyday, haha!" as my clothes were in tatters after they did the x-rays on my leg and back but they couldn’t really move me to take my outfit off for fear that I had injured my spine as well. Joking aside, I lay there thinking I will never walk again. It was a doom-and-gloom situation. But the specialist arrived and informed me that I just needed a major surgery to fix my broken leg and smashed knee cap. He reassured me and my husband that all will be well.

And sure enough, I stayed 5 days in hospital, was in crutches for the next two months, started physiotherapy around about the sixth week, and by the end of the fourth month, I did not look like a car accident victim anymore at all.

Nowadays, I walk fine but find it hard to bend on my knees and stand up from kneeling. But otherwise, I am 90% there.

So was this my destiny? My view is that it happened to me at a time when I needed to feel and prove that I am a stronger person than I or other people give myself credit for. So, yes, I believe it happened for a reason…but I could have chosen to go either way. There is a lot that could be said for the support that my family and friends gave me at that time. But for the most part, I think that maybe my willpower kicked in and did not allow me to just accept the situation as my fate. This was a temporary situation from which I could rise up from and I needed to rise from it if not for others, for myself.

I always look back to it and say that it was one of the most fulfilling experiences in my life as I learnt a lot about myself, and life as well.

Destiny….is the path you choose to walk when life throws you a fork.