"Nourish your destiny." At first glance, this seems paradoxical. If something is destined, doesn't it simply unfold on its own? But perhaps destiny isn't a fixed track we're riding but something more alive, more participatory, something that requires tending to fully express itself.
Consider the distinction between fate and destiny. We're fated with certain unchangeable givens, the body we're born into, our ancestry, the time and place of our arrival, certain capacities and limitations. These are the raw materials we're handed, the knife we find ourselves carrying through life. We don't choose these any more than an acorn chooses to contain an oak.
But what we do with these materials, how we work with what we've been given, this is where destiny lives. The same knife can become a surgeon's instrument of healing, a chef's tool of nourishment, an artist's means of creation, or something more destructive. The difference lies not in the knife itself but in how we nourish our relationship with it.
This nourishment operates at multiple levels simultaneously. At the most practical level, we engage in what we might call self care, tending to body, mind, and spirit through simple daily choices. We eat foods that strengthen rather than deplete us. We move our bodies in ways that build vitality. We choose thoughts and practices that expand rather than contract our awareness. We cultivate relationships and work that feed rather than drain our essential nature.
This might seem ordinary, but there's profound wisdom in recognizing that destiny requires daily tending. Just as a plant needs consistent water and light, our unique unfolding needs consistent care. We're not passive recipients of a predetermined future but active participants in feeding what wants to emerge through us.
Yet here's where it becomes interesting. As we engage in this nourishment, genuinely tending to our body, mind, and spirit, our relationship with destiny itself begins to shift. We might begin by trying to nourish our destiny into something we approve of, something we can embrace rather than resist. We want health rather than illness, success rather than failure, connection rather than isolation. This is natural and necessary. We're human, and humans have preferences.
But as we continue this practice of nourishment, something unexpected often happens. The very act of sincere tending seems to transform our relationship with outcomes. We find ourselves less attached to steering our destiny toward specific results and more interested in discovering what naturally wants to emerge when properly nourished. It's like tending a garden, at first we might have rigid ideas about what should grow where, but gradually we learn to work with the actual conditions, the actual soil, the actual light, discovering what thrives with our particular combination of fate and care.
This doesn't mean we become passive or indifferent. We continue to nourish, to tend, to participate fully. But we hold our ideas about "good" and "bad" destiny more lightly. We begin to sense that our destiny might be wiser than our preferences, that what's trying to emerge through us might be more interesting than what we planned.
At this level, nourishment becomes less about control and more about alignment. We're not trying to force our destiny into a predetermined shape but rather creating conditions for its most authentic expression. We're learning what specifically feeds our particular nature, which might be quite different from what nourishes others. The surgeon requires different nourishment than the artist, the teacher different sustenance than the builder. Part of our task is discovering what genuinely feeds our unique expression.
There's a beautiful paradox in this, we must care for our destiny as if everything depends on our nourishment, while simultaneously recognizing that destiny has its own intelligence, its own trajectory that exists beyond our approval or disapproval. We're both sculptors and clay, both gardeners and seeds.
As we deepen in this practice, we might discover that nourishing our destiny isn't about achieving a particular outcome but about fully inhabiting our given life. The person fated with physical limitations who nourishes their destiny might not overcome those limitations but might discover depths of wisdom or compassion that wouldn't have emerged otherwise. The person fated with certain gifts might find that nourishing their destiny means accepting the responsibility that comes with those gifts, even when it's uncomfortable.
At the most profound level, destiny reveals itself as neither good nor bad, neither desirable nor undesirable. It simply is, like a river finding its way to the sea. The river doesn't judge its path as better or worse than other rivers. It simply flows, working with the landscape it encounters, sometimes rushing, sometimes pooling, always moving toward its destination in the way that's uniquely its own.
Yet even knowing this, we continue to nourish. Not because we must control the outcome, but because nourishment itself is part of our destiny. The oak tree doesn't stop reaching for light just because it can't control which direction the wind will blow its branches. It reaches because that's what oak trees do. We nourish our destiny because that's what conscious beings do, we participate, we tend, we care for what we've been given.
This nourishment is both deeply personal and ultimately universal. Personal because each of us must discover what feeds our particular combination of fate and possibility. Universal because the act of nourishing our authentic destiny contributes to the whole. A surgeon who fully nourishes their destiny to heal serves not just themselves but all who need healing. An artist who deeply tends their creative destiny offers beauty to a world that hungers for it.
Perhaps this is the deepest teaching of "nourish your destiny," that in learning to tend our own unique unfolding with both effort and acceptance, with both care and surrender, we discover that our individual destiny is inseparable from the larger destiny of life itself. We're not isolated plants growing in separate pots but part of a vast garden, each of us nourishing not only our own flowering but contributing to the beauty and balance of the whole.
The invitation then is simple but not easy, to recognize what we've been fated with, the raw materials of our life, and to consistently, patiently, lovingly nourish what wants to emerge from these materials. To hold our preferences lightly while tending deeply. To participate fully while releasing control. To explore how our destiny, properly nourished, may know how to unfold in ways that serve both our own becoming and the becoming of the world.
