— Seizing Fate —

March 22, 2026

I will seize fate by the throat; it shall certainly not bend and crush me completely.

Ludwig van Beethoven

About the Author

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) is, by nearly any measure, the most consequential composer in the history of Western music — and he composed much of his greatest work while going deaf.
He was born in Bonn, in what is now Germany, the son of a court musician who recognized his talent early and exploited it ruthlessly, waking the boy in the middle of the night to practice and presenting him to audiences as a child prodigy. His childhood was not gentle. His father was an alcoholic whose instability cost the family its stability again and again; Beethoven, as a teenager, effectively became the head of the household, petitioning the court for a portion of his father’s salary to feed his brothers.
He moved to Vienna at twenty-two and quickly established himself as the most extraordinary pianist of his generation — improvising at the keyboard with a ferocity and inventiveness that left audiences speechless. But in his late twenties, he began to notice something terrifying: a ringing in his ears, a progressive loss in the upper registers. By his early thirties he was functionally deaf in social settings. By his late forties he was entirely deaf — unable to hear a single note of the music that poured from his pen.
In 1802, in a small village called Heiligenstadt where he had retreated to recover his health, Beethoven wrote a document — later called the Heiligenstadt Testament — addressed to his brothers but never sent. It is one of the most harrowing and honest documents in musical history: a man reckoning, in writing, with the possibility of suicide, with the agony of a world that would not let him hear, and then — choosing, deliberately, defiantly — to stay. “It seemed to me impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me,” he wrote.
He stayed. He brought it forth. The nine symphonies, the late string quartets, the Missa Solemnis, the Hammerklavier Sonata — much of it composed in silence — stand as one of the most staggering acts of creative defiance in human history.
He died in 1827 during a thunderstorm, reportedly raising his fist toward the lightning.

Historical Context

This line comes from a letter Beethoven wrote in 1801, in the earliest stages of his hearing loss, to a close friend named Franz Wegeler. He was twenty-nine or thirty years old, and the thing that made his life possible — his hearing — was already beginning to leave him. He had not yet written the Heiligenstadt Testament, had not yet composed the Eroica or the Fifth Symphony or the Seventh or the Ninth. He was standing at the beginning of his loss, not yet knowing how far it would go, writing to a friend who would understand what it cost.
I will seize fate by the throat; it shall certainly not bend and crush me completely.
This is not bravado. Read in context, it is the statement of a man who is terrified and determined in the same breath — who can see the cliff but is refusing, with everything he has, to step off it. The deafness would take everything from him in one sense, and from that loss would come some of the most transcendent music ever written. He could not have known that in 1801. He only knew that he was not done. And he chose, in that moment, to seize fate rather than be seized by it.

A Story to Sit With

By 1824, Beethoven had been completely deaf for several years. He had not attended a public concert in a long time — the humiliation of not being able to hear responses, of cupping his ear while people watched, was too great. But on May 7, 1824, his Ninth Symphony received its world premiere in Vienna, and Beethoven stood at the front of the stage to conduct — or rather, to provide a kind of shadow-conducting alongside the actual conductor Michael Umlauf, who had quietly instructed the orchestra and soloists to follow him, not Beethoven.
The Ninth Symphony ends with the Ode to Joy — a choral finale that breaks into the orchestral form like a sunrise, the soprano voice rising above the full force of the orchestra and chorus in what remains, two centuries later, one of the most overwhelming sound experiences human beings have ever produced.
When it was over, Beethoven was still conducting — lost in his own inner version of the music, facing the orchestra, unable to hear the applause that had erupted behind him. One of the soloists, a contralto named Caroline Unger, gently touched his arm and turned him around.
The audience was on its feet. People were weeping. Hats were being thrown in the air. The police reports from that night note that the applause reached five ovations — one more than protocol allowed even for the Emperor.
Beethoven — who had not heard a single note of the symphony he had just conducted — wept.
He had seized fate by the throat, and fate, in the end, had given him this.

Scripture Cross-Links

Joshua 1:9 — “Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.”
2 Timothy 1:7 — “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”
Doctrine and Covenants 6:34 — “Therefore, fear not, little flock; do good; let earth and hell combine against you, for if ye are built upon my rock, they cannot prevail.”
2 Nephi 4:19–21 — “Nevertheless, I know in whom I have trusted. My God hath been my support… He hath filled me with his love.”
Isaiah 40:31 — “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”

Thematic Reflection

There is a kind of courage that acts when the outcome is uncertain — when you cannot see the summit, cannot guarantee the result, cannot know whether the thing you are fighting for will survive the fight. Beethoven had that courage in abundance, but what interests me most about this sentence is its honesty. He does not say fate will not crush me. He says it shall certainly not crush me completely. The qualification matters. He knows the deafness is coming for him. He knows it will cost him something enormous. He is not pretending otherwise.
What he is claiming is that there is a remainder — something in him that will not be crushed, no matter how much is taken. And he puts his hands around fate’s throat, not to destroy fate, but to make clear that he has not let go. He is still in the fight. Still choosing. Still reaching.
This is what courage often looks like in real life: not the absence of fear, not immunity to loss, but the decision — made again on every hard morning — that I have not been finished yet. That something remains. That I will bring forth what I have left.

Richard’s Personal Reflection

I have had patients who were dealt diagnoses that would have broken most people — and some of them were broken, at least for a while, which is entirely understandable and human. But I have also sat with patients who heard their worst news and, after a period of grief, made a decision I recognized immediately: I am not done. Not defiance for its own sake. Something quieter and more resolute. A reclaiming of agency in a situation that wanted to strip it away.
I remember one man — a rancher from a rural county, not a man given to many words — who was diagnosed with a degenerative neurological condition that would eventually take his ability to walk. He sat with the news for a long moment in my exam room. Then he said: “Well. I’ve got things to do between now and then.” He stood up, shook my hand, and walked out.
He came back to see me for twelve more years. Every visit, he reported what he had managed to do since the last one. He outlived the prognosis by a wide margin. I don’t know if Beethoven was in his bones, but the same thing was: a man who had decided that fate would not crush him completely, and who kept his hands around its throat until the very end.

Grandfather’s Counsel

My dear ones, you will face things that feel larger than you — circumstances you did not choose and cannot easily escape. Fear is a natural response to those moments. I am not asking you to be free of fear. I am asking you to be something more important than fearless: unconquerable.
There is a part of you that your circumstances cannot reach without your permission. Your faith cannot be taken. Your love cannot be taken. Your dignity, the choice to go on doing what is right and good — that cannot be taken unless you hand it over.
Beethoven could not get his hearing back. He wrote the Ninth Symphony anyway. Not in spite of the deafness — in some sense, through it.
Whatever you are facing, you have things to do between now and the end of it. There is music in you that hasn’t been written yet. Seize today — not fate’s throat, but the day’s possibility — and don’t let it go.