Some destinies are determined by our observations and identification with the experiences of others when we are young. A young lady whose mother was abused by her father may choose to hate men or never get married. A young man whose father suffered great abuse from his mother may choose to hate women or never get married. Most parents damage their children deeply when they tell them what is going on in the marriage or report their mother or father to them, they don’t know the kind of psychological damage, which sometimes is irreparable, that they do to children raised in an environment of suspicion, violence, anger, anxiety, hunger, and negative words.
The determinants of destiny and desire are often environmental.
In the case of Mandela, his destiny would have been different if not for Apartheid. In the case of Jesus, his destiny would have been different if not for religious rulers and the perversion of the worship of Yahweh. In the case of Elizabeth, she birthed John the Baptist simply because Mary had been chosen to be the virgin who would bear the baby Jesus. In the case of Mary, the word of God had been spoken forth that a virgin shall conceive and bear a son. Of course, there were many virgins at the time, but she was the right one walking by the angel of God’s presence when the message was to be delivered.
Destiny always responds to injustice by choosing champions who would correct a wrong cause and set the faulty foundations of such right, Destiny also responds to perceived injustice with the aim of ensuring the challenge being faced at that time is not faced again so while everybody, regardless of gender, is supposed to find love and get married someday, the wiring of many had been tampered with by the events and experiences of other people, which they are privy to and heavily invested in emotionally. This then redefines the concept of love, danger, the parameters of what is acceptable, unacceptable, and so on, for that individual in a relationship. The fear of letting the self go becomes an issue for the person if she is a female. For the male, it is the fear of accommodating another in their space on a permanent basis, especially if such has an emotional hold on him. Emotion becomes the enemy, even though they cannot do without it so what was supposed to bring in warmth and love becomes the most distrusted object, as a result, love becomes perverted. They call it the fear of commitment for both the male and the female she is not afraid of intimacy; she sometimes craves it and would have it with whoever comes along, regardless of their marital status of such however, she would always choose her independence over being married and subjected to the headship of any man. The same applies to him he craves intimacy, wouldn’t mind having a woman in his house to warm his bed, but finds marriage very difficult, a hurdle to cross. Sons of domineering mothers whose fathers seem spineless and daughters of domineering fathers whose mothers seemed helpless in the relationship, the child observed, often end up embracing this pattern of behaviour, which solidifies into their walk of destiny over time.
A lady recounted how over thirty suitors came asking for her hand in marriage within a period of eighteen years. She started having sexual intercourse at fifteen, unfortunately, her first experience was statutory rape while she was still in secondary school and so was the second and third experiences before she turned twenty but by twenty she had mastered the world of men and she began to take advantage of her looks to line up men from all walks of life who would come to their campus to look for a good time. Many of the men were working, and they were hoping to date students and perhaps get married one day. This happened to most of her friends, but her she got proposed to, but she turned it down. All her friends got married right after their university days, but she couldn’t she desired it but from afar, as soon as the man came into her life and the prospect started becoming real, she would do everything in her power to ruin the relationship. Her mother was not assertive enough in her opinion, and her father was too uncompromising in his stance. She was heavily shaped by her observance of her parents’ marriage. Even at thirty-eight, when she talks to her father on the phone, there are two predominant emotions, tears and screaming when she perceives that her mother was not being treated fairly, or satisfaction when she notices that the second wife of her father was treated shabbily or put in her place. All the men who came to ask for her hand in marriage left one after the other. She just couldn’t bring herself to that point where she would lose herself to another in the name of marriage, and yet her number one heart cry is to be married. She writes to friends and relatives, colleagues and acquaintances, asking them to introduce eligible men to her. The man shows up and then goes through this process of analysis of paralysis for each one until she eliminates everyone on the list and finds herself back to square one Bankers, lawyers, doctors, marketers, entrepreneurs, sportsmen, musicians, pastors, journalists, men who live abroad and men who live in her country have all come asking for her hand in marriage at one time or the other, nothing works out, and yet she keeps searching. The cure to her dilemma is obvious, but she is not seeing it. She needed to fix herself first, get therapy, and gain perspective on the level of damage done to her and how to heal from those. If she can get this right, she will be able to let go of herself and embrace the love another has to offer without this, her desire will be like a candle lit on both ends, it will burn out quickly and without remedy. The lesson here is simple: Destiny may be saying something while desire is saying something else, the power to choose which path to tread lies with the individual. Destiny shapes some Desire shapes some.