Note: Ethos Of A Man Is His Daemon

There are many threads of personal conversations one keeps having within one’s mind.

I don’t use the word destiny very lightly. For a long time now I’ve been peeling layers upon layers of the underlying assumptions it implies.

A few years back I’d read a good thread by Edward Butler, where i was introduced to this word Daemon a second time. The first was while learning java —

Daemon thread is a low priority thread that runs in background to perform tasks such as garbage collection.

The second time was in the meaning of — something other than us, that runs parallel to us and seems to guide our life’s journey. Our destiny.

So when i read “The Ethos of a man is a daemon’ — it translates for me as “The मन्यु of the man decides his daemon’ — here replacing ethos with manyu — the inner spirit, but keeping daemon, because i prefer that word — a parallel background thread of our other that seem to guide and make choices for us.

Is there pre-defined destiny, i think not. But there is something that takes us along journeys that match who we are and keeps us away from who we are not, yet keeping the free-will that is decided by our मन्यु।