Fate or Mission?

Reading it step by step

Last page left Confucius with a Heaven that knows you. So what has Heaven set out for me? The word 命 has two faces. One is fate: the era, family and body you were given. The other is mission: what this one life of yours is for. The first face isn't yours to choose. The second is yours to find.

First: Confucius put Heaven's mandate in everyone's hands. Before him, the mandate was the king's warrant to rule. When Confucius said, “At fifty I knew Heaven's mandate,” and “Without knowing mandate, there is no way to be a junzi,” it became a task anyone could wake up to: follow a nature that leans toward good, and keep your own post well. His own lot was harsh. His father died when he was three, his mother when he was seventeen; late in life he buried his son, Yan Hui and Zilu; no ruler would use him. Yet the Analects says that at home he was easy and cheerful. Fate, however hard, did not take his mission. He came to know it at fifty, held it in awe, followed it on the road, and in the end even the burden became a joy.

Second: Mencius says, accept what you can't change, and don't blame fate for what you can. Whether life is long or short, don't waver: “cultivate yourself and wait for it; this is how you stand firm in your mandate.” “Nothing is not fate; accept what is proper in it.” I take what comes, but along the right lines. So someone who knows fate doesn't stand under a tottering wall; being crushed there is not fate. Xunzi goes further: rather than praise Heaven, take what it gives and use it. One stresses accepting, the other using; neither lets you give up.

Today it might look like this. Your name is on the layoff list. That is the face of fate; you can't change it. How you spend the next three months, learning a new skill or scrolling and complaining, is the face of mission.

Fate deals the cards. Mission decides how you play them.