Kismet

Way back when - and I'm talking way back...I think I was about 14, the local theater group, The Bay City Players, put on a production of Kismet.  I got my first paying job playing in the pit orchestra, 2nd trumpet, and was rewarded with $25 for 6 performances and hours of rehearsals. I think I netted about $0.20 an hour. I didn't care.

I got the gig completely by accident as I was in  the Music Center on Main Street talking with the owner, Phil Herter when the guy from Saginaw came in who usually got the job and told Phil that his business took him out of town, yada yada, and Herter turned to me and said "you're hired".  Kismet.

I don't know the philosopher's name but he was French and lived in the 1860s or so - cloudy memory - and he supposed that the air was full of somewhat magical powers in the form of little particles and who you turned out to be, your talents etc., were ordained when you took a breath and inhaled one of the bubbles.  It was his way of describing the "road of chance" taken or not, determined or not, undertaken or not.  He further believed that chance plays a huge role in life from being in the right place at the right time or being underneath a piano falling from a rooftop - all a matter of chance.

Kismet isn't chance though; it is fate and there is a subtle difference. Chance is "heads I turn right, tails I go left". Kismet is "no matter what, I was meant to go left" (flip of the coin or not).

When you think of it, kismet is a much more elegant explanation of things that happen; something of a pre-determination or pre-destination of the Calvinist belief set.  Kismet has its origins in the middle east where it means "luck" - not chance. Luck and fate but as in it hasbeen my luck ... or it has been my fate...

Sitting in that pit orchestra and listening/playing that wonderful music - I can remember it on the page to this day, clear as a bell, black and white - well, almost. 

Baubles, bangles,
Hear how they jing, jing-a-ling-a,
Baubles, bangles,
Bright, shiny beads.
Sparkles, spangles,
My heart will sing, sing-a-ling-a,
Wearing baubles, bangles and beads.
I'll glitter and gleam so,
Make somebody dream so,
That someday he may buy me,
A ring, ring-aling-a,
I've heard that's where it leads,
Wearing baubles and bangles and beads.