“Into this Universe, and Why not knowing, / Nor Whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing; / And out of it, as Wind along the Waste, / I know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing”Omar Khayyam · Rubaiate · 1120 · catrenul 28
At both ends of life we have no say: we are carried, not piloting.
Existence is compared to water flowing wherever the slope wills and wind blowing across the waste: motion without chosen direction. It is a statement about our fundamental lack of control — at both ends of life, birth and death, we have no say. Anyone who has sat by a parent's deathbed, or held an unplanned newborn, feels this being-carried by larger forces literally.
Khayyam does not complain about being carried; he observes it and, paradoxically, breathes easier. If our entrance and exit are not ours, then the burden of total control becomes dead weight. What remains is the stretch where we are awake: how we speak, what we taste, whose hand we hold. A person who misses a train can curse the timetable or look out the window: the morning city is there either way. Accepting that we are carried is not passivity; it is giving up the fight over what was never ours. And if we cannot choose the route, a natural question arises: what is worth doing while we are carried?
Why it matters It frees you from needing total control: some questions have no answer, and life goes on anyway.