Period: The periodic sentence, characterized by the suspension of the completion of sense until its end. This has been more possible and favored in Greek and Latin, languages already favoring the end position for the verb, but has been approximated in uninflected languages such as English. [This figure may also engender surprise or suspense–consequences of what Kenneth Burke views as ‘appeals’ of information.
There were hundreds of ways to the difficult question’s answer: false. It was false. People were not predictable, they were unpredictable. If you did make a prediction and it came true, it was random luck. Ok ok—some times you could predict—like if somebody had to pee, they’d pee. That’s about as far as it goes—bodily functions. That’s it,
I wasted half my life making unfulfilled predictions. It was frustrating and debilitating. The worst was that I’d marry Mary Beth. We were engaged for 5 years. I thought that was a sure sign that we’d be married. I told her that five years was long enough to be engaged. She told me she agreed. I heard wedding bells. Then, I heard her say: “You’re right. I’m leaving.” I was so thrown off by what she said that I vowed to never bank on prediction as a basis for my hopes and dreams, and faith in the future ever again.
My motto became “You never know.” That was it. I just flung myself into the future. Each step I took was a potential step to nowhere—over the abyss falling through the vicissitudes of life, never reaching the end. I became a fatalist. I had no agency. I was a floating leaf in the gutter after a heavy rain. Everything depended on something else—there was no straight line connecting what I wanted to do with what I did. I lost my sense of guilt, What I did was not mine—it came from the inscrutable void of fate: prepackaged, predetermined, inevitable.
Given that I was now a fatalist, I felt pretty good, not having to own up for failure. Of course, I couldn’t own up for success. It didn’t matter—I’d given up personal responsibility: You never know. Or, everything was meant to be. Living life “off the hook” has made me a worse person, but I’m happier than I was. This opens up a question about morality. I would call myself “amoral.” I’m not immoral and I’m not moral. I’m amoral. It’s not that I don’t care. Rather, I can’t care, insofar as my trajectory through life is propelled by fate. There’s nothing I can do about that, even though we have the illusion that we can. “What will be will be.”
Tonight, I’m going out with Mary Beth. I have no idea what will happen, but I know what I would like to have happen.
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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