Open Fate is one of those conjoined polarities inviting us to take a firm stand between them. More often, we take a stand on one side or the other. When open, we set ourselves as an individual with agency, resistant to conformation. When acknowledging fate, we recognize everyone is trapped by questions of survival and the persistence of earlier tapes and current peers.
Living with both, or between, leads us toward the responsibility to respond to the factuality of experience stripped of explanations. Such responsiveness recognizes our context is beyond a mirror that places our self in the center of every picture. Our openness finds structural economics and COVID-19 constraints forever rising to confront our imaginaries. Regarding fate, it is far less implacable than a convenient excuse for present failures to act and previously failed actions.
Attending to a responsibility to respond to experiences put us in a position of presenting fate with possibilities it had attempted to seal off. Such a presentation is more than an opinion essay or “white paper” that mansplains an irrelevant detail. Our response includes shaking sense into a resistant and distant other. This holds a danger to ourself by strengthening the defensiveness of an immoveable force and wearing ourself out or receiving the consequence of being crushed by the powers that be. It also holds the danger of creating a revolution in which many are lost when traditional markers are simply destroyed rather than reconstructed.
Open to experiences, open to responsiveness and persistence—we honor a larger context while reshaping it.