Redtree Times

Destiny’s Way— At West End Gallery October 2025

You must unlearn the habit of being someone else or nothing at all, of imitating the voices of others and mistaking the faces of others for your own.

When destiny comes to a man from outside, it lays him low, just as an arrow lays a deer low. When destiny comes to a man from within, from his innermost being, it makes him strong, it makes him into a god… A man who has recognized his destiny never tries to change it. The endeavor to change destiny is a childish pursuit that makes men quarrel and kill one another. All sorrow, poison, and death are alien, imposed destiny. But every true act, everything that is good and joyful and fruitful on earth, is lived destiny, destiny that has become self.

~Hermann Hesse, Letter to a Young German (1919)

This passage from Hermann Hesse says so much and may well sum up the differences that separate us as humans. So many of us accept an imposed destiny, one that doesn’t bring true joy or feed our soul. We live by imitating others, copying the words and actions which we believe are expected of us.

We follow in the direction of the outer voice rather than the inner voice.

And that way seldom, if ever, brings us to our true destiny. That way seldom finds us acting authentically or speaking with our true voices.

We become a mirror and an echo of others. We stray so far from our own path of destiny that we fail to recognize that which is truly good and joyful to us.

I love Hesse’s last sentence from this passage: But every true act, everything that is good and joyful and fruitful on earth, is lived destiny, destiny that has become self.

I love the idea of a lived destiny, one that has become enmeshed in a self that seeks to enrich this world, to find joy and share it with others so that they might find their own joy.

As Hesse points out, once you have found the less traveled road of lived destiny, you will never be tempted to find another route forward, to seek shortcuts or bypasses.

You trust the path you are on because you know that it is yours to follow.

Could I be off base here? Sure. This is the era of social media, after all, where every word and thought can be parsed, challenged, and argued.

I don’t really care though. Once you have found that path you can call your own, the one that you know is your destiny, the disembodied discouragement from others are but faint murmurs since their paths are so far away from yours. Anything said that does not seek to be fruitful or bring joy, love, or goodness to the world is only a distraction to those on their true paths.

The painting at the top, a new 12″ by 36″ canvas, seemed to fit beautifully with this passage from Hesse. I call it Destiny’s Way. I guess any painting portraying my destiny would have to feature the Red Tree, right?

This painting will be included in Guiding Light, my 24tth solo exhibit at the West End Gallery which opens October 17.

Here’s I Want to Break Free from a 1986 performance from Queen. I suspect that Freddie Mercury knew a thing or two about following one’s own path.