Thought for this day: 8 June 2015

Although Omar Khayyam believed in pre-destiny and most of his poems reflect this, there are many alternative ways of interpreting his writings that have relevance to our modernist view of the world. For example: the futility of trying to change what you have done, it’s already in your past and cannot be changed; the acceptance that we are inconceivably small on the scale of the cosmos and cannot hope to influence its progress in any meaningful way; and how limited is our real understanding of the world in which we live and that this is likely to always be the case.
Three quatrains from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam that put it much better:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,
Whereunder crawling coopt we live and die,
Lift not thy hands to It for help – for It
Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.

Then to the rolling Heav’n itself I cried,
Asking, ” What Lamp had Destiny to guide
Her little Children stumbling in the Dark?”
And – “A blind Understanding!” Heav’n replied.

Note
Omar Khayyam (1048-c.1131)
He was a famous Persian mathematician, astronomer and philosopher,
He lived in the 11/12th centuries and worked at the court in Eastern Iran.