Lately, I have been pondering on life and its purpose, should we choose to say that it has one. I had even had a few discussions on fate and destiny with some friends to catalyze my thought processing. Another big part of my thinking is The Dark Tower book series written by Stephen King. The series follows a gunslinger on his journey to a dark tower, or a sort of nexus of space and time to save the "worlds" from collapsing. The protagonist has a sort of fate belief, called Ka, and it has led me to think about my own understanding of fate.
Fate is defined as "the development of events beyond a person's control, regarded as determined by a supernatural power," by dictionary.com. Already, this definition implies a religious backbone to believing in fate. That is, fate is often aligned with Christianity, for example. Where I have a problem with fate by this definition is that loss of control. How does fate account for the good and the bad of the world? How should we just relinquish our free will for what is going to happen regardless? If children in Syria are "meant" to die so young, why would I be meant to thrive, to get that job, live much longer? To me, fate is used as both a way of wishful thinking, but also a cop-out for when things go awry. If it is the first one, I see no problem with it. Faith, fate, and hope are wonderful things if they inspire you to be better along the way and be at peace with yourself. However, if you are reckless and immoral, choosing to instead say, "well if it's meant to be..." is just a way of removing the responsibility from yourself should things go south.
Another way fate is perceived is when people say, "everything happens for a reason." What I choose to think is that there is a reason for everything that happens. We all find reason in happenings when we reflect on them, so it makes sense that we find connections in things after the fact. As stated before though, going into things with a "reason" in mind seems to be an excuse to not necessarily put forth as much passion or effort as one should.
Destiny is defined as "the events that will necessarily happen to a particular person or thing in the future," also by dictionary.com. I also disagree with the idea of destiny since I do not believe that I am without control of my own life. I don't think anything is certain, for anything can happen. The timing and possibilities of everything in our life just happens, not so much by means of fate or destiny, but by chance. Should the timing be a little bit different, so too would so much of our lives. To me, destiny and fate are a coming-to-terms with our own lives. We are trying to accept what is before us and create an almost imaginary understanding of it all rather than taking full control of our lives, or taking the bull by the horns as they say.
My stance on it all is this: seize the day. You may believe that things may turn out a certain way, but we should constantly prepare ourselves for the best future we can. Ka, or fate may blow like a wind, but to let it blow us aside is absurd. At the end of the day, you are in control of your own life, and no one else.
