Gawler, Jan 2005

About a year ago, on Christmas Day in Indonesia, I stepped out in front of a motorbike. The handlebar reorganised the arrangement of the bones in my right arm and hand, and I spent a lot of time last year looking at my arm, stretching it, flexing it, twisting it, coaxing it, talking to it, wondering when the bones would go back to how they were before, and full movement and strength would return.

In the meantime, something possibly momentous has happened. The lines on my right palm have changed. My head line has grown an offshoot at the end, moved down almost a centimeter and restarted strongly from there. There is also a star in the middle of the new line. On top of that, I now have a whole heap of new travel lines. In fact, now that I use a computer everyday, I have developed lots of new travel lines on both hands from the curled position of my hands when I type.

So does this mean that my future has changed? Is my fate different now? I already know that a split second of insufficient attention can make big changes in holiday plans, but has it changed my old age too? What will happen when the bones go back? Will those lines fade and that potential future too?

I don\Zt believe it exactly, but I don\Zt disbelieve it either. It sits there in that unconstrained, undecided, ambivalent space, much like the future itself.

• T said on 05/01/25 at 05:05 PM.....

  Oh great post…  personally I think that in many ways we do create our own destiny..  or at least excercising our free will does influence where we end up.

  I refuse to believe that EVERYTHING has been pre-ordained and that I have no control over my life.  Sure I have no control over genetics and the gifts/curses I was born with, but there is reward for individual effort and working with one’s talents to move through this world the best way possible.