am i food, or am i free?

I'm not sure if it's the inevitable talk of a better and brighter new year, the company I've been keeping, or my own state of mind, but the subject of fate keeps coming up lately in a way that's hard to avoid. Over some unspeakably good pancakes at Maggie Brown on Saturday, I quoted Empire Records to a friend:

"I'm guided by a force much greater than luck."

Because he's not a woman in his late twenties, he missed the reference and nodded seriously. "Yes, but I think luck is also part of it. I believe in luck, and I think it and fate go hand in hand. I do think my life follows a plan."

Here are three strange things about that statement:

1) I nodded, and felt like I agreed with it in a serious manner.
2) I also have no idea whether or not I believe in any sort of god / organizing principle.
3) This disconnect has been present for most of my life and has never bothered me.

In fact, it's my lack of feeling troubled in this situation that has me worried: about a year or so ago, I had a really serious discussion with another friend about spirituality. The "serious" portion was all on his end, as was the "discussion"; for my part, I had nothing to contribute. I'd never considered myself a spiritual person, and when it comes down to it, I don't know what the force behind the universe is and I'm not bothered by the fact that I don't know - either it'll be revealed to me sooner or later, or it won't.

That said, there's something markedly disturbing about not having a strong belief about something people are so passionate about, and I find myself wanting to share in that kind of spirit. I've been known to attend AA meetings simply because they're held in churches and I find something perfect in church ceilings. (If I was the kind of person who filled out the "interests" section of social networking sites, "the ceilings of churches" would be somewhere in between "scotch" and "my friend Mike's love life.") I think the stages of the Bodhisattva's path are really quite beautiful. Franny and Zooey is even my favorite book!

And when you ask me where my sympathies lies, when you wonder where my faith is, I fail to give you an answer that explains my staunch belief that things happen for a reason. I will tell you something about how my faith lies in things I can see, like people and songs and books, and that this to me is more than enough. I might tell you a story about how people fall into my life in ways so bizarre they seem as though they must be predetermined, but I won't be able to connect that to a meaningful set of beliefs that explain the constructs behind that sentiment.

I don't have a grand plan for my life; I find that 99% of the time, it falls into place in ways my tiny mind could never have dreamed. My best friends come to me from the strangest places: sitting in front of me in a class I'm about to drop, jumping off a stage after a rock show and shaking my hand, writing me emails about a blog from 1500 miles away. I started an entire career in the music industry by letting someone I'd just met for the first time in person take me to visit someone's office in the hopes of scoring an advance of a Mazarin album.

I look at people from afar and I want to keep them in my life, and 95% of the time, they end up there without any outside effort on my behalf. This is why I believe that things happen for a reason, and it's also why I'm struck dumb and can't make sense of it when such matters fail the other 5 percent of the time. This week is one of those times, and I'm left sitting here wondering if my belief in a 'force much greater than luck' is just my convenient way of creating order out of chaos.

Does everything work if you let it, or does everything just kind of fall all over the place and let you conveniently forget the things that don't fall sensically?