"We make choices but are constantly foiled by happenstance"
About this Quote
Human beings act with intention, draw plans, and tell themselves coherent stories about what they are doing, yet the world keeps intruding with accidents, coincidences, and wrong turns. The tension between agency and contingency sits at the heart of Penelope Livelys work. She returns again and again to the way a stray event knocks a life off course, not through malice but through the ordinary turbulence of reality. The word foiled suggests the thwarting of a design, while happenstance stresses that the thwarting is impersonal; the cosmos is not out to get us, but it is not organized around our preferences either.
Livelys novels dramatize this with precise, almost scientific curiosity. A random mugging sets off a chain of unintended consequences; a chance meeting reorients a relationship; a misread signal changes a professional fate. She plots such cascades to show how intricate and fragile our designs are, and how causation often runs through tiny hinge moments. Memory then steps in and polishes the rough edges, turning contingency into a narrative that feels inevitable. Lively is alert to that seduction of hindsight, the way we retrofit meaning to accidents so our past looks tidy and our choices look sovereign.
Rather than endorsing fatalism, the insight invites humility. Choices still matter profoundly; they are the only levers we have. But they operate within a web of forces we cannot foresee or govern. That awareness recommends flexibility, resilience, and empathy for the messiness of other peoples lives. It also prizes attentiveness to the present, because small decisions and stray moments may prove consequential.
There is a historical undertone here too. A 20th-century imagination shaped by war, displacement, and social change knows how swiftly the ground can shift. Livelys art honors both the will that chooses and the weather of chance that surrounds it, asking readers to live deliberately while making peace with the worlds incorrigible unpredictability.
Livelys novels dramatize this with precise, almost scientific curiosity. A random mugging sets off a chain of unintended consequences; a chance meeting reorients a relationship; a misread signal changes a professional fate. She plots such cascades to show how intricate and fragile our designs are, and how causation often runs through tiny hinge moments. Memory then steps in and polishes the rough edges, turning contingency into a narrative that feels inevitable. Lively is alert to that seduction of hindsight, the way we retrofit meaning to accidents so our past looks tidy and our choices look sovereign.
Rather than endorsing fatalism, the insight invites humility. Choices still matter profoundly; they are the only levers we have. But they operate within a web of forces we cannot foresee or govern. That awareness recommends flexibility, resilience, and empathy for the messiness of other peoples lives. It also prizes attentiveness to the present, because small decisions and stray moments may prove consequential.
There is a historical undertone here too. A 20th-century imagination shaped by war, displacement, and social change knows how swiftly the ground can shift. Livelys art honors both the will that chooses and the weather of chance that surrounds it, asking readers to live deliberately while making peace with the worlds incorrigible unpredictability.
Quote Details
| Topic | Free Will & Fate |
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