My Horoscope and Macbeth

Thursday June 26, 2008

I have my own doubts about whether reading the daily horoscope is halal or not.

Lately, I check my horoscope nearly everyday on Facebook. Sometimes I check it out of curiosity but other times I feel that I want to know if these things really work.

Whether it is true or not, I found it interesting.

Today, I checked it as usual and it says: "All the drama lately has only made you stronger. You can handle whatever life throws your way."

The words are an astrologer’s words. I don’t believe in it in the first place so I can’t rely on it. However, I start to think what harm will be done if I used these words for my own benefit; for my own good. I can take them as a wish and work on making it real; a dream that I waited for too long and finally got the chance to make it come true.

Those who knew me know how desperate I am for such words these days. I am bridging from one stage of my life to another. I am growing up. I am on the verge of taking the responsibility of my decisions upon my own shoulders. I am changing the way I used to live, the way I deal with people. I am changing the course of my life.

Consequently, I am suffering a lot. I hate to change but it is inevitable at this juncture of my life. I am hesitant and always afraid of anything that might affect me and the way I live.

But the words have stricken a bell in my head. As I am a student of literature, I know exactly what makes a drama and how it should affect people. All of a sudden I remembered all the dramas that I have studied. I can search them and figure out of them a way to be stronger and how to handle what life throws in my way.

The first thing that came to me is Macbeth, one of Shakespeare’s four great tragedies and my favorite drama ever. And by the way, I am a Shakespeare maniac.

I know that Macbeth’s plight and tragedy lay in his wishes and ambition; his dreams which he wants to make come true. He was put in the same test as mine. The witches tells him a prophecy (here we can take the prophecy as the horoscope’s words). The prophecy states that he will become a king. Throughout the play, Macbeth exerts his utmost effort to make this prophecy come true sweeping all the obstacles that can come between him and his dream. He was bewitched and enchanted. He let go all his morals for the sake of a wish that he waited for so long.

But at the end he was killed. He died in front of his throne, his dream. He leads a sleepless, restless life to fulfill his wish. Only a moment before his death, he realizes his fault. He knew that things do not go this way. You can’t make your destiny or future. You work for it and wait for it to happen.

This is the lesson you get from a drama. This is how catharsis (purification of emotions through art) works.

After this short speculation, I start to think about this short sentence that engaged my mind for a good time. How am I going to be stronger?

Am I going to take arbitrary decisions to prove to myself that I am strong and can handle it; that I can bear the responsibility of my decisions; that I can stand in the face of the storms and whips of life or what seems to me as though. Am I going to do so only to prove to myself that I am stronger than before? In this case, the only thing I have proven is that I am a bad student who has learned nothing from Macbeth and I will end up like him destroying my present along with my future.

The witches say that Macbeth will be a king but did not say that he should murder one in order to become so. Same is my horoscope. It says that I will be stronger but it also says that I should learn from the drama as well.

Now the picture is somehow clear. The horoscope is a wish I want to make come true. The question remaining is what am I going to do?

And i guess the answer is :

I will try to be stronger, dependent and grown up in my actions. Maybe I’ll quite read this horoscope for a while. And above all I’ll leave it to God to shape and design my destiny...