when i think of everlark, i think of a jewish concept called beshert. it’s a yiddish word that’s pretty hard to describe in english. there isn’t a one-to-one translation. it’s not only about romantic love, but (at least nowadays) it’s most often used in that context. sometimes people define it as “fate,” but i think that’s an oversimplification. what it really means is destiny, but understood through the framework of the choices we make. in other words, “this would've happened anyway.”
people describe their partner as “my beshert,” and in many ways that language boils down to “soulmate.” but beshert is less a guarantee that something will happen, that "fate'" will push people together or to make specific choices, and more that people making certain choices will lead to an outcome becoming inevitable. your soulmate is not your soulmate because an unascertainable force has guided you to each other, but because of all of the decisions big and small which shape you into people who are meant for each other.
and that, to me, is the story of katniss and peeta. their story is one of a lack of choice, and yet their love is defined not by the choices of the people around them, but by the choices they make.
that lack of choice becomes central to katniss and peeta before either of them are so much as a concept in their parents’ minds. yet, the simple fact that their parents made choices when they had no choices to make is what put their children in the same place at the same time. peeta is only possible because burdock saved otho’s life. katniss is only possible because asterid defied a future that otherwise seemed inevitable—a life with a boy from town, almost certainly otho himself. why otho chose to marry who he did, why burdock had the wherewithal to protect otho, why asterid had the courage to refuse her upbringing, we can only guess. we are left wondering: but for these actions, from a kick in the leg to fleeing home for love, would the eldest daughter of older parents and the youngest son of three boys have been in the position to choose each other at all?
there are generations of everdeens and marches and mellarks and bairds whose decisions big and small brought everlark to the brink of each other. but not one of those innumerable actions would mean anything had peeta not chosen to heed his father’s words on the first day of school. had the girl with two braids in a faded red dress not chosen to sing in music class. had katniss not run into the feast to save the life of the boy with the bread. had the sick, starving, bleeding loverboy not taken the palmful of berries from the girl on fire.
there’s plenty of luck, there, too. peeta points it out himself in the cave. but what is luck compared to choice? was it luck that cinna was there on time to make the choice to link them by their glowing hands? or that snow was full of enough resentment to fuel his choice to, even insincerely, allow the introduction of the two-victor rule? what of thresh’s integrity guiding his split-second choice to, against all reason, spare katniss’ life? or seneca crane’s short-sightedness, so uncharacteristic of a gamemaker, enabling his choice to allow them both to live? where does choice end, and luck begin? are they truly distinguishable?
prim’s reaping would not go awry if katniss did not volunteer, true. but if haymitch didn’t stumble forward, drawing the cameras before teetering off the stage, would effie be frazzled enough to pluck the first card off the top of the slips? a woman so committed to ritual, to protocol, known for her predictable words and consistent idiosyncrasies, shirks her process of reaching deep into the bowl. would she otherwise pull one of peeta’s other four slips? one of gale’s 40? or some other boy altogether? any are possible. none are probable. but the fact of the matter is that she does pull peeta’s name after this unsettling sequence of situations, and it is impossible to know whether that is a matter of luck or choice or neither or both.
so where, then, does that leave the boy with the bread, who is a whiz with fires, and the girl on fire, who owes her life to bread? who come from a place where the ritual binding two lovers for life is toasting bread over a fire? whose story together began with two burnt loaves? what, ultimately, makes them each other’s beshert?
the answer lies in the dandelion in the spring. the dandelion is their resilience of character against all odds. the manifestation of every choice they make when they otherwise have none. peeta, taking a beating to give up bread his family could not afford to spare, and learning that he could wield his kindness as defiance of a place where he himself saw nothing of the sort. katniss, in the midst of weakness of body and mind, finding the strength to grow both inside and outside the fence, to save herself and those who cannot help but depend on her. together, they discover the strength in their kindness, and so they discover themselves.
and that is what would have happened anyway. because in any universe exists a boy who grows kind from a lack of love at home, who needs strength to keep his kindness from turning him too soft. in any universe exists a girl who grows strong from supporting her family, and needs kindness to keep her strength from turning her too hard. someone who can tame a fire. someone who sees life in a loaf of bread.
neither choice nor destiny can claim such an inevitability in the absence of one another. and they, ultimately, are nothing without the love that binds them together. that is beshert.
