A Cosmic Joke

“If fate doesn't make you laugh then you don’t get the joke.” Shantaram

The Bible says God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh day. I assume God was bored on his day off so he entertained himself by watching humans make plans.

The Stoics believe control is an illusion fueled by the ego. “Nobody’s in control of nothin’.” Instead, chaos is the rule, and order is the exception.

It took me two heart attacks and five stents in my heart to change my life’s approach from planning to preparing. No matter how much or how well I planned, a revolution here and a divorce there upset my often well-organized apple carts. So I finally realized that instead of planning, it is better to prepare for whatever faith has in store and try to survive it by heeding Mike Tyson's observation that "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."

After his retirement, Andrew Grove, the founder of Intel Corporation wrote a book called Only the Paranoid Survive. This may sound like a negative approach to life, but the reality is that life is uncertain and none of us have any control over what fate has in store for us, so the best strategy is to assume what can go wrong will go wrong, and be ready to deal with it.

Meantime, it is wise to get over ourselves, have fate, and roll with the punches.
— Sina.