Pinball Wizard

Did you play pinball in your youth?  I remember the electronic machines.  Stuff happened, lights flashed, paddles flicked, bells sounded, springs compressed and exploded.  Sometimes you'd set your ball free and wouldn't have to lift a finger as it ricocheted around the inside of the machine.  You didn't even need to try to flick the flapper, as it were, it was just everywhere, all at once, out of control, bashing into everything.  Sometimes when I look at facebook I realise I have friends like that, their lives resemble that shiny silver ball, no control as they are lurched from one thing to another, they speed up, slow down, get caught behind a barrier, start to fall, and are heartachingly flicked into a completely different place.  It's not easy watching, not at all, and the powerlessness of not being able to open any kind of trap door or provide any kind of resting cushion for even a short while is uncomfortable.  I don't like watching the unstoppability of it, never knowing if it's an up or a down they will hit next and not able to just grab their shoulders, look into their eyes and try to make the dizziness and disorientation go away.

I'm not sure I could live like that, but I do wonder if from the outside, people believe that I do?

Not meant.

It wasn't meant to be like this.  I sometimes look at people around me and I want to shake my head sadly and say "sorry, it really wasn't meant to be like this, was it?".  It's a curious double standards thing because I wouldn't dream of thinking like that about me, or even saying it to me as some kind of comfort.  It's not very comforting is it?  Doesn't change a thing, doesn't make events which have happened unhappen, and doesn't make them any better.  Doesn't offer a reason, an explanation or anything.  Maybe it's just one of those things that people say?  Or do they.  Do people say "it wasn't meant to be like this". I know people say "everything happens for a reason", and I think that's bollocks too.

It wasn't meant to be like this acknowledges that the fairy tale you built about how life would be has not come true.  It doesn't mean that there was ever a plan created by you or for you or involving a man in the clouds.  The man in the clouds, I suspect, if such a thing existed would have to take full responsibility for the fact that actually, it was meant to be like this.  That's destiny, everything is pre ordained.

Is the inability to say "it wasn't meant to be like this" an admission that there is something pre ordained and it all went rather horribly wrong?  Or in fact, is it a load of tripe because what's meant to be will be, what has happened has, and we break into song with whatever will be will be?