Philosophical musings on buying tickets to Taipei
I was ordering airline tickets to Taipei for David and myself the other night. I had been searching for several days. Thought I found a good pair of tickets at Eva Air, but before I could reserve them, they sold out. Dismayed, I headed to Busan the next day, planning to buy the much more expensive tickets from Korean Air when I returned that night.
When I got home, I decided to do a little more searching. At Cathay Airlines I found the perfect tickets. Cheap cheap, ideal schedule. I had searched the site before but had never found anything like this. It seemed fated. That Eva would sell out, that I would go to Busan, that I would find these tickets. I sat down to order, but then things didn’t go so well. It refused my credit card. David doesn’t have a credit card. There weren’t many seats left, so I started to panic. See, having decided that I was fated to have these seats, I ceased to be a fatalist, but became rather a determinist. I contacted my mom, who was on vacation in Colorado, and through a confusing series of prolonged communications, managed to use her credit card to order the tickets.
Once it was all finished an hour and a half later, I saw at the bottom of the page, “Cardholder MUST be present to pick up tickets.” I flipped out. Shouting, throwing things, and generally acting half my age. See these details were interfering with my fate.
It then occured to me that ironically, the fatalist is blind to his fate, but embraces the course of events as the only possible course. His fate, though perhaps sealed, is nonetheless unknown. The determinalist, on the other hand, knows his fate, and will stop at nothing to realize it. It is the belief in his fate that makes the determinalist determined. And it is the very fact that the fatalist is blind to his ultimate fate that he embraces his daily fate.
Had I been truly fatalistic. I would have remained calm and accepted each event as it occured. Contented with whatever outcome, embracing every possibility with the same indifference. For whatever will be will be.
...Anyhow, fated or not, I’m going to Taiwan in a week, of that much I’m determined.
