Discipline - The Aspiration

Our destiny is frequently met by taking the very paths we have chosen to avoid it.  Sayuri's "destiny" in Memoirs of a Geisha comes up against her aspirations in nearly every chapter.  It is difficult to determine whether the happy ending to the novel is due to her destiny or due to her single-minded, purely-focused aspiration.  If we call it "destiny," she has been a passive passenger on a pre-ordained journey, and there has been no point whatsoever to her mental conditioning and emotional tribulations.  If we call it "aspiration," she has taken charge of her fate and brought about exactly that which she had set out to do on the day she changed her living.  From the moment of her prayer to the gods, she directed her mind, body, and spirit towards the one man she knew in whom kindness came easily.  The discipline of her aspiration is expressed here:  "With  my eyes squeezed tightly shut and my hands together, I prayed," she explains.  "I would suffer through any training, bear up under any hardship, for a chance to attract the notice of a man like the Chairman again."  And, every moment thereafter was devoted to this singular vision until, finally, at long last, she realizes her vision.

Sayuri remembers, "For a flicker of a moment I imagined a world completely different from the one I'd always known, a world in which I was treated with fairness, even kindness."  She continues, "And when I raised myself to look at the Chairman, I had a feeling of leaving my misery behind me there on the stone wall."  To get very, very picky here, I notice that she says when I raised myself to look, and that is the key to this sentiment.  That is the definition, as I would understand it, of aspiration.  When I raise myself to look.  When I raise myself to look, I see more, and I see further.  I can change things before they happen.  I am not a passive recipient of destiny's hand (if I do not wish to be); I take an active participation in that which shapes me (if I wish it so).

I do not take it for granted that there is a destiny for me.  I do discipline myself so that I can face the world and all of the choices presented to me.  I do not wait passively:  I wait actively.  Behind my eyes, there are dreams, and there are ladders I craft to reach them.  There are butterflies - the symbolic metamorphosis is the achievement of aspiration.  My geisha name, Choji, a butterfly name; my sole aspiration, to become that which You have always wanted in me.