Aiding the Inevitable

"One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it" said Ooguay in the film Kung Fu Panda. This theme has been around for quite some time and I find it interesting that it is reiterated in this light-hearted movie.  After Ooguay has a vision that Tai Lung (an imprisoned enemy with vengeance on his mind) will return, his friend Shifu quickly sends a messenger duck to double the guards and enact extra precautions.  It is then Ooguay says his line, which turns out to be true in this story.  For, with a feather from the duck, Tai Lung picks the lock on his prison and escapes.  Thus, by trying to stop the inevitable, the inevitable happened.  Or was it inevitable?  The story begs the question, “If the duck had not gone to double the guard and lost a feather, would Tai Lung have escaped?”  These types of stories play with your mind. I often wonder, would it have happened if they had tried not to stop it, or would it have just happened another way?    Ooguay’s wise words nicely summarize the events of other stories I’ve read. In an ancient Irish tale, a man is told that the marriage of his daughter would bring about bloodshed in his household.  So he decides he will never let her marry.  However an Irish warrior falls in love with her and asks for her hand.  After her father’s refusal to give her to him in marriage, the warrior kidnaps her by force with the help of his warriors.  They had to fight the household retainers and left behind several rooms full of bloody corpses in order to make good their escape.  Thus the prophesy came true.  Just as in Kung Fu Panda, the story is ironic.  The reader puzzles over the thought that if the father had just let the man marry his daughter, then none of those people would have died.  Yet, maybe it would have just happened another way, if the father had said yes, then perhaps another suitor would have appeared at her wedding and started a fight then.  Anyhow, this is definitely a theme.  The events in both of these stories evoke the same questions. Another similar tale is summarized as follows:  a man was told he would meet Death in a certain city; by a strange turn of events plus his attempts to avoid Death, the prophesy came true and he met Death in the location foretold just the prophesy specified.  Again, the prophesy the character tries to escape comes to pass despite (or through) the attempt to escape it.