I’ll say it straight out. I don’t believe we have a fate or a destiny. Instead, I’ll lay out the various reasons why I believe that we don’t throughout this statement. First off, we have no control over the circumstances of our birth. To be honest, even our parents don’t. Nobody in this world determines whether we are born except the unique chemical and biological processes within our mother’s womb. People would like to say that we have a divine hand guiding each process throughout our lives, but I disagree. I think that a creator wouldn’t leave so many of a person’s characteristics up to the random gambling of human reproduction if we are meant to have a specific purpose in life. Each of us would be specialized at one specific thing that no one else can do if we were predestined for a task.
Let say writing for an example since this is a blog after all. People might say that it was my fate to write. However, I would say that is completely wrong. It is not my fate to write. In the end, it is ultimately my choice to continue writing. Each and every one of us has the potential to be whatever we want to be, and occurrences have every potential to happen to each of us. It’s possible for me to wake up tomorrow and win the lottery. It’s possible for the earth’s orbit to get perturbed by an interaction with a planet like Jupiter or a supernova to erupt in the night sky in twenty years. All I’m saying is that life is all about the chances we take and the cards we are dealt.
Someone is not destined to play a role. They are cast for that role. I know many actors who seem like they were designed for that role, but who’s to say they were destined to play the villain instead of the hero? Why should people choose to color within the lines that someone else created? Make your own path through life ringing true to your own rhythm. I know that’s what I’ll be doing in the near future. In the service of refuting fate, one email could change your whole life with a job offer you could never refuse. Would you say you were destined to receive that email? I wouldn’t, I would say that you were greeted by Fortune’s graciousness, a beautiful, bounteous blessing you should never take for granted.
Now, I understand why people cling to the idea of fate and destiny. Fate gives us something to blame when things go wrong. It’s incredibly comforting to know that you don’t have to take responsibility for things going wrong around you. Hell, I like to blame luck and my social class all the time, but I also know that for something to change in your life, you have to be willing to act. Not only that, but you need the right circumstances to fall into line for you. When luck, opportunity and skill all align, who wouldn’t call it fate? Yet the absence of the written will of some cosmic being out there doesn’t make life any different than it already is. People struggle because resources are not allocated justly. We’re taking steps towards the equality that all human beings deserve, but we aren’t there yet. If we stop hiding behind the ideas of fate, destiny and other limiting beliefs, we as a species will be able to ascend to the truest heights we have the potential to reach: the stars and beyond.
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