muss es sein?

inexorable (adj.)

1550s, from M.Fr. inexorable and directly from L. inexorabilis "that cannot be moved by entreaty," from in- "not, opposite of" + exorabilis "able to be entreated," from exorare "to prevail upon," from ex- "out" + orare "pray".

.

Sometime a few years back i fell in love with this word. It just sounded so good, felt so nice on the tongue. You could roll the syllables around -- almost palpably. Of course i also knew what it meant. That was where it started getting not-quite-so-nice.

.

Doing research for the current project, what struck me with increasing clarity was the sense of the inevitability of history. We live our tiny lives in the ever-shifting here and now, and we don't often think about what has brought us to this present -- all the accidents (as they seem) of time, place and chance, fortuitous meetings or partings that led to this and then that. In a recent conversation with a group of old friends about bilingualism and their experiences with learning Chinese back in school, it occurred to me that so much of what we had gone through as students in the 80s and 90s, and consequently, what shaped our values and social circles, had their roots in the explosive political events of the 50s and 60s, which of course were rooted in circumstances that went even further back in time, etc etc ad infinitum. And how unaware most of us were of our relation to history.

.

The same goes for the seemingly less-momentous circumstances of our personal lives - the people we meet (or not), the people we love or leave. There's an inevitability to things -- life is shaped by a combination of our personality, choices, life circumstances, and the larger surrounding socio-political-historical context, against which we have less say than we might want to think.

.

i like the metaphor of the tidal wave that appears in the title of the recent novel depicting that period of student activism in the Chinese schools: 'Mighty Wave' ('巨浪'). And i remember that presentation BP did, where he juxtaposed pictures of the galaxies, then stars, then planets, against photos of individual people.

.

Beethoven asked: Muss es sein? His answer? Es muss sein! For all his struggle against fate, that was still his answer. i suppose this could be either a comforting thought, or not -- depending on how one looks at it.
.
.
[Edit:  just a few hours after the original post was written:
.
There's something in all this about necessity that is crying out to be written at some point. i think it might also involve somehow the word 'nexus'. And maybe also the word 'vision', and the blessing of being able to see.]

.

.