Title: Bow To Destiny Poem by ashok jadhav

(The speaker stands alone, as if before an unseen horizon. Their voice carries defiance, exhaustion, and, finally, quiet surrender.)
I once believed my hands could shape the sky.
That if I clenched my fists tightly enough,
the world would bend—
that fate was nothing but a rumor told
to frighten the weak into obedience.
I planned.
I measured my days with ambition,
stacked my dreams like bricks,
and called the structure my future.
Every step was deliberate.
Every choice felt sovereign.
I told myself, I decide. I command. I rule.
But destiny does not knock.
It arrives like weather.
It came in small betrayals at first—
a door that would not open,
a promise that quietly dissolved,
a victory that tasted strangely of ash.
I argued with the universe then.
I shouted into the dark,
demanded explanations, demanded fairness,
demanded to know why effort was not enough.
"Look at my scars, " I said.
"Look at my discipline, my sacrifices.
Surely I have earned a different ending."
Destiny answered with silence.
Then came the moment—
the one that splits life into before and after.
The collapse I could not prevent.
The loss I could not bargain away.
The truth that stood unmoved
no matter how fiercely I resisted it.
I fought.
Oh, how I fought.
I blamed the stars, the gods, the timing,
the faces that turned away when I needed them most.
I clenched my will until it bled,
trying to rewrite what had already been written.
But resistance has a sound.
It groans.
It cracks.
And eventually, it breaks the one who resists.
There is a particular exhaustion
that comes from battling what cannot be undone.
It empties you.
Not all at once,
but breath by breath, hope by hope,
until even anger grows tired of standing.
That is when I understood:
bowing is not always defeat.
To bow to destiny
is not to declare oneself powerless—
it is to recognize the weight of reality
and choose not to be crushed beneath it.
It is the moment pride loosens its grip,
when the heart says,
"I cannot change this—
but I can change how I carry it."
I lowered my head, not in shame,
but in clarity.
I stopped asking why me
and began asking what now.
The world did not soften,
but I did.
In that softness, something unexpected happened.
Peace—
not the loud kind that celebrates,
but the quiet kind that survives.
The kind that sits beside sorrow
and does not try to evict it.
I learned that destiny is not an enemy.
It is a current.
Fight it, and you drown.
Flow with it, and you learn
how far it can carry you.
So I bow—not because I am broken,
but because I am awake.
I bow to what I cannot change,
to the endings that arrived uninvited,
to the paths that closed without apology.
And in that bow,
I stand taller than I ever did in defiance.
For acceptance is not the end of courage.
It is its most honest form.