Only One Link At A Time
Untold amounts of money have been spent to discover what lies ahead of us. We read books on the zodiac, check our horoscopes and seek out fortune tellers. But reflecting back on my life I’m not sure I would have really wanted to know my destiny. The great Spirit, in his infinite wisdom, has hidden our futures from us.
Fate was in the Greek religion, three goddesses who controlled lives. They were Clotho, who spun the web of life; Lachesis, who measured it’s length and Atropos, who cut it. I am always reminded of the Fates when I think upon the story of Mudungwe, an African fisherman.
Many years ago a syndicated columnist by the name of Hal Boyle would often run some really unique stories from time to time. My all time favorite, or at least the one I couldn’t forget was, “Crocodile gets his Man.” Mr. Boyle pondered the probability of fate and destiny. He begins with: Can a man really do anything about his own life?
Or is its length and the manner of our death prescribed by higher powers even before we are born? The possibility that we are merely pawns of the fates has interested fools and philosophers since man first looked up to the stars and asked the eternal “why?”
A baby falls from a seventh floor window and lives. Another tumbles onto the floor and dies! Why? Is it doom or destiny?
A news story related how a homeless man was sleeping 30 feet from a roadway but was killed when a car was forced off the highway and ran over him. Probably no man had napped in that spot since the beginning of time and probably no car had passed through the spot either. What brought man and vehicle disastrously together at the exact moment, chance or destiny?
Life is full of such mishaps and many people say, “Well, it was just in the cards.” Or” everything is a matter of odds.” And for some strange reason it comforts them. Perhaps because they don’t have to blame themselves for what happens. War brings out this type of fatalism in many. “If a shell or bullet has your name on it, then it’s your time.” Of course the fellow that professes this theory ducks like everybody else when a shell bursts in his vicinity.
All of which brings us to a true story the likes of which O. Henry might have fashioned into a macabre tale. The setting is the continent of Africa. There was an inquest heard about a native that took a death leap into a crocodile infested river.
The fisherman was named Mudungwe. It seems that while fishing one day, a crocodile had seized him by the right arm and he narrowly escaped death in powerful jaws by slashing away at the crocodile’s eyes with his knife. With blood flowing from both its eyes, the creature had finally released his would-be dinner. The doctors were unable to save his right arm and it was amputated.
After a long period of recuperation, he again returned to his occupation of fishing on the river. Many years later he was again seized by a crocodile. This time he was saved by a companion who stabbed the crocodile with a spear. But not before Mudungwe had sustained great injury to his left arm. At the hospital doctors had to amputate his only remaining arm, the left one.
He returned to his village after a time but he refused to eat or talk with others, sitting alone brooding most of the day. One afternoon he jumped up, muttering to no one in particular, “crocodile calling me, crocodile calling me,” The other villagers watched astounded, as he raced to the river, leaped in and was immediately dragged under and killed.
The villager summoned a local gendarme. The policeman immediately shot the reptile to death. When the villagers hauled it from the river, they were amazed to find that it was blind in both eyes and bore the scars of spear wounds on the body. The duel between Mudungwe and the crocodile was over but what had brought them together three times? Chance, destiny or the fates? After all, a person like the simple fisherman, so strong, honest and hardworking should have been exempt from such a malicious fate. But as we all know the days of our lives slip so unconsciously by and only a small dabble causes a slight turn of the rudder and the ship goes to Heaven or Hell.
As a child, would Mudingwe have wanted to know what awaited him in life? I doubt it. As the statesman Winston Churchill once observed: “It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link of the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.”
