A/N: I'd like to thank those of you that have taken the time to read this story. I have found that it has become much deeper than I ever could have anticipated, and I find that it is actually quite draining pouring all of these thoughts out on to the page. I imagine that this isn't everyone's cup of tea, so I'm grateful for everyone that is taking a chance with me on something a little different.
I think our personal opinions always colour what we write, but I'm just trying to be a little more explicit about it. The themes that influence each chapter aren't anything like a definitive opinion on the subjects – I don't think I've completely formed my own opinion yet. But they do all mean something to me, and I'm trying my best to be honest with you, because these ideas really are coming from within me - a stream of consciousness, if you will.
Opinions matter in this story, so please feel free to share yours, if you would like.
Perhaps I need to add a "Scroll down to the third section if you don't want to read the theoretical basis for each chapter" disclaimer?
Regardless, there are really only a couple of major themes left in this story - we're getting much more down to the plot now, I hope.
Chapter Three: Serendipity
Do you believe in fate?
I, personally, don't think that the answer to that question is as simple as 'yes' or 'no'.
I think that that question is the type of question that just raises a lot more questions. See? Even in that one sentence the word 'question' occurred three times.
Let's think for a minute about some of the questions raised by that one seemingly simple question.
Firstly, if you don't believe in fate, how do you think the world works? Is everything simply a chance occurrence randomly selected from a finite number of possible permutations, or is human agency the sole determinate of all outcomes? How does human agency even work, if we assume that people don't have the benefit of being able to look into the future and know how each possible action that they could take will affect their current situation?
From there, there are all manner of questions. Many of them are deep, and philosophical, and for you to make your own decisions about.
For the purposes of our discussion, I am going to propose that we accept the hypothetical reality of something akin to fate.
This, of course, raises no fewer questions. In fact, I would argue, it probably raises more.
If you believe in fate, how do you define it? Who, or what, controls fate? Is fate even controlled, or is it just something that simply exists? If it simply exists, how does it come to be? If there is something called destiny, is there an arbiter of that? To what extent is ones fate fixed? Can your actions influence your final destination, or the path that you take to get there? Or, is everything you do simply futile – is everyone just a player in the giant theatre of human existence?
If fate does exist – how do certain fates come to be assigned to certain individuals? What makes one human being more deserving of a certain path in life than any other? If all people are truly born equal, why does everyone seem to express a different subjective experience of life? Why do different people believe different things? Is there a universal truth? If so, why do some people get closer to figuring out the correct answer than do others?
These are questions that cannot be easily answered. I would argue that there is no correct answer to them, and I would certainly argue that, if there is a correct answer, there is no way that humans will ever have access to it.
Life quite possibly wouldn't make sense if there wasn't some sort of direction to it. At the same time, it isn't particularly fair to discount the role of human agency – after all, there are always choices, whether we would like to admit it, or not. Just because it might be easier for some people to sleep at night because they can feel like they didn't have a choice in their actions, it doesn't mean that the choices weren't there.
And yet, it still doesn't seem quite right to suggest that there isn't something along the lines of 'fate' out there in the universe. I think the key point that supports this conclusion is the fact that, while people can definitely choose the actions they take, they cannot always exactly anticipate the future consequences of those actions.
Sure, you can have a reasonable idea of what will be the outcome of some actions.
If you go to a tattoo parlour, ask for a tattoo, pay the requisite sum of money, and then sit still while a tattoo artist emblazons a certain image on your skin, you can be fairly certain that you will, for the foreseeable future, have a tattoo.
However, you would not be able to anticipate that, two months later, you would be walking down the road when a hot individual of the gender that you were attracted to happened to stop you, comment on your tattoo, and offer you their number. You probably also wouldn't expect with reasonable certainty that that individual would one day become the person that you would choose to spend the rest of your life with.
So, if we accept that our actions can have unanticipated consequences, and if we accept that the occurrence of these consequences may not be entirely random, then we begin to have some concept of what the idea of fate might truly mean.
I should clarify, here, that I am not presupposing that the occurrence of consequences isn't entirely random. Each and every individual is perfectly entitled to decide whether they think consequences are random, or if they think they are tied to a bigger picture of fate. We truly can't know the correct answer to that question. What I am doing here is making a decision to accept the premise that consequences do not occur completely randomly. The assumption is that consequences are somehow linked to actions, but that they are also, in some ways, tied into a bigger trajectory of a completely indiscernible broader trajectory. I think that each individual has some sort of 'fate', but that the final destination is neither fixed nor certain.
The question I will not deal with here, mainly because I don't think any one person will ever accurately express an answer to it, is that of 'why?'.
I think this leads us nicely into the idea of 'serendipity'.
If we accept that there is something along the lines of fate, then this goes a small way to developing an understanding of why there are sometimes consequences that seem to be simply perfect. They just fit into some amazingly nice picture, and they seem to show something of a representation of a world where everything makes sense. They are, in a word, serendipitous.
Sometimes it just seems like life decides it is finally time for something good to happen, and it just nudges us in that direction.
If there was no fate, if life was random, then there would be no such thing as 'serendipity'. There wouldn't even be a word for it.
How could we possibly say that we were 'fortunate', if we didn't believe in good fortune?
At the very least, we seem to want to believe that good things can happen to us for a reason. Yes, I said 'good things'. I think out opinions on 'bad things' are more easily associated with the concept of chance. We only like to think of 'bad things' being tied to fate if we believe that someone has done something to deserve them.
So, sometimes good things happen for a reason. Maybe two people meet because they deserve some happiness. Maybe two people are simply meant to be together.
I am not arguing here about the nature of fate, what fate does, or how it is determined. I am simply saying that sometimes something that has powerful positive consequences happens, and that perhaps it doesn't happen entirely by accident.
/\*/\*/\
Let us ponder briefly a few questions that are particularly pertinent to our story.
Kurt Hummel didn't believe in religion. He had made that perfectly clear to the world in his junior year of high school when his father had a heart attack.
However, this didn't mean that he didn't believe that people need something to believe in. If anything, he was agnostic, at least when it came to religion.
He extended that idea to his understanding of the workings of the world. There might be such a thing as fate, but who was he to consider the form that fate might take?
All he knew was that he could understand how the idea of fate gave some people comfort. At the same time, he couldn't understand how fate could be so woefully sadistic. Did everyone have to experience a certain amount of both good and bad in their lives? Or was there more to life than that?
Sometimes he wished he didn't believe in fate. Then he wouldn't have to wonder why so many things in his life didn't go his way. But then life also seemed too empty. If it really was all just random, why even bother?
Kurt didn't believe that life was empty. He would have given up trying a long time ago if he thought it was.
He found that all he could do was keep trudging through every day of life without constantly searching for a universal truth.
At the same time, at the back of his mind, was one little question – 'is the universe saving something amazing for me?'
/\*/\*/\
What about Blaine Anderson?
Blaine Anderson was slightly more sure about the existence of fate.
He had felt sure in high school that his life would be over if he was left at his public high school to deal with the bullying. After the post-Sadie Hawkins Dance incident, he was well aware that his bullies now knew he was weak. Even if he had learned to defend himself, they still would have outnumbered him, and now they were more aware of his mortality. He had no doubt that, had fate not intervened and made his father decide to at least care about him enough to move him to a private school after that initial beating; his life would have been in jeopardy.
And so, Blaine believed that the universe had planned something more for him than a demise due to homophobic bullying in high school.
At Dalton, Blaine had found something of a sense of belonging, even if it never extended beyond the barriers of friendship.
It was also at Dalton that Blaine had truly begun to engage with his passion for music.
Leading the Warblers had given him confidence in his performance abilities and that unique sense of both purpose and calm that he felt whilst singing had convinced him that music truly was the one thing he was destined to pursue in his life.
When he discovered that he also had a talent for song-writing, it was like a giant red arrow had been painted on the map of life for him.
Blaine wasn't entirely sure why music was destined to be his life, but he never doubted that it was.
Going to NYU to study Music Composition and Music History was the easiest decision he had ever made.
Part of it probably had something to do with his amazing talent for music. But part of it probably also had something to do with the grand scheme of things that the universe had planned out for him.
After all, could it really be a coincidence that both Blaine Anderson and Kurt Hummel, so similar in their lack of confidence in the world to find anyone to complement their existence, had found themselves studying at NYU?
/\*/\*/\
"Hey, Rachel, I'm sorry I flipped out a little last night," began Kurt, walking into the dining area of their small apartment.
"A little?" questioned Rachel, raising an eyebrow.
Kurt at least had the grace to look sheepish at that.
"It's alright, you know, Kurt. I am here for you – all of your friends are."
Kurt wasn't yet ready to respond to something like that. He had spent most of the previous night carefully reconstructing the walls that he had built around himself over the last few years.
He smiled at Rachel, although it did not quite reach his eyes.
"Thanks, sweetie. I really am sorry. I think it was just the stress of the semester getting to me. I'm fine now, I promise. Back to the grindstone, as they say."
"Are you sure, Kurt? I'm here if you ever need to talk. Or you could call your dad – he's always happy to hear from you."
"I'm sure, Rachel. Thank you for your concern, but I'm fine. I'm actually going to miss the subway if I stay here too much later, so I'm going to grab some toast and head out now. Can I make you any?"
"No thanks, I've got a late start today," replied Rachel, thoroughly unimpressed that Kurt had managed, yet again, to change the subject.
"Ok, see you," said Kurt as he headed for the door.
"Oh, Kurt, wait! Did you get that email last night about the third year and above music students' thing?"
"Yeah, I did. I suppose we better go, do you think?"
"Of course! This could be a big part of our futures, Kurt. How is going even a question?"
Kurt felt a small smile grace his lips – there was the Rachel he knew and loved.
"Ok, I'll meet you at the Music Theatre on campus at 6 p.m.?"
"5.30 p.m., Kurt. We need to make sure we get good seats. Tonight could make or break our futures!"
Kurt couldn't help but wonder if Rachel was going to display a similar level of enthusiasm every week. Probably, if past experience was anything to go by.
"5.30 p.m., got it. See you then, Rachel."
"See you," Rachel beamed. It was almost like she thought she had got Kurt out of his funk simply by making sure he was going.
The truth was - Kurt was no less resigned to his loneliness than yesterday. The difference was that his little break-down had functioned in a manner similar to a pressure release valve. Now that the build-up of tension and introspection had been released into the world, he was far better equipped to maintain his façade of equilibrium.
Besides, this music students' thing did sound interesting, and it was about time to look at getting some experience in the industry, if he was serious about making something of his qualification.
/\*/\*/\
Blaine woke up feeling a little more tired than usual, but also far more happy. Perhaps Wes and David were correct about the power of socialising.
It was then that he glanced at his clock – 06.41 a.m.
"Crap," he muttered, "my bus leaves in fourteen minutes. How on earth am I going to get ready in time?"
Of course, he then wasted about two more minutes lying in bed attempting to plan out the route that would get him out of his apartment as quickly as possible.
"Half past seven classes are always the worst," he pondered, reluctantly throwing off his nice warm duvet cover.
He quickly trudged out to his living area, grabbing up the clothes that he had haphazardly arranged on a chair the night before. Thank goodness I'm fairly organised, he thought.
He felt like he'd barely thrown on his clothes, packed his bag with the necessary supplies for the day, and grabbed his bus card out of his wallet when it was already 6.53 a.m. While he was quite lucky that there was a bus stop almost directly outside his building, there was no way he was going to have time to pay more than a cursory amount of attention to his hair.
He glanced longingly at his pot of hair gel.
However, everyone who is at all familiar with hair gel knows that it is simply not possible to slop a large amount in one place on one's head and then spread it around. The art of gelling one's hair is far more complex than that.
And so, Blaine decided to do the one thing that he had time to do. He grabbed a small amount of hair gel and placed it in his hair, hoping that it would at least control some of his curls.
With that, he grabbed his bag and ran out his door, taking the steps in the stairwell two at a time. He briefly though that he must have looked like a madman as he rushed through the foyer of his building and out to the bust stop.
But, somehow, he made it, tacking himself on to the end of the line of bus passengers just as the bus arrived.
Little did he know that his lack of time and resultant lack of hair gel would turn out to be a truly serendipitous occurrence.