But even if you don’t feel like a voiceless figure in the hands of the almighty Fate those few lines just act as a reminder – a reminder to cherish every moment of your life for you never know when it’s all gonna end and even if you knew chances are that you can’t overleap it – after all there is only one destination of absolute certainty that we are all headed to and we simply can’t avoid it. It’s one of those things that just makes you feel a certain way, you know…you get a funny feeling in your stomach but it’s not fear or desperation (well for some it might be)…it’s more like a sudden realisation that you can’t outrun death and more importantly you can’t domineer over time and most specifically the time that is given to you (if you believe in things like predestination of course). I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me.
So I just thought I’d share it here since it speaks on several very philosophical subjects such as life, death, chance, inevitability, predestination and time. It’s actually an Ancient Mesopotamian tale that first appears in the Babylonian Talmud and came to Western attention with its retelling by British writer W Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) in his 1933 short fable An Appointment in Samarra.
In the very first minutes of “The Six Thatchers” – the first episode of series 4 of Sherlock we were introduced to a fable, narrated by Sherlock himself and it’s definitely one of those stories that once heard stay forever hidden somewhere in the corners of your mind palace.
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