There’s no fate but what we make for ourselves
Kyle Reese, The Terminator
On the surface, I want to say that I don’t believe in fate/destiny because they preclude the possibility of free will.
If there is a fate/destiny set in stone somewhere for all of us, it means that no matter what we say or do, our loves will unfold exactly the way they are supposed to. No amount of hard work, study, determination is going to affect my life in a positive way. Furthermore, nothing bad that I ever do will have any negative consequences for me – at least not any consequences that aren’t part of the master plan.
I like to think that my life is a result of the choices and decisions I have made. Every thing I have ever thought, done or said has resulted in exactly what my life is today. Good or bad. That is the very essence of free will. I chose to be a teacher. I could have chosen a different career path; but teaching is what I wanted to do. I made choices in both my marriage and my long-term relationship that resulted in both of them ending. That’s not to say that those relationships ending is my fault. But things unfolded the way they did because of decision that both my exes and I made.
That last part i just put in italics brings me to an interesting point. There are things in this world that are not of our choosing. In the example of my prior relationships, it was the decision on BOTH my exes and I that unfolded to determine how things went. Decisions I made in my relationships were affected by actions and decisions of my exes, and vice versa. The there’s other things, like genetics, as one example. I am a product of Mother and The Old Man – as they are products of their parents before them. I have control of things like my hair color, eye color, height or even certain personality traits.
I started to do a deeper dive on the concept of fate versus free will, which led me to Friedrich Nietzsche and this article, Nietzsche and the Myth of Free Will. Apparently, the article contradicts a lot of the commonly held interpretations of Nietzsche’s view of fate vs. destiny. To sum up the article as succinctly as possible, “We are neither completely free nor completely unfree, neither pure cause nor pure effect.” They are things in this world that are ore-determined. At the same time, there are things in our life that unfold based on choices we make. For the record, Chat GPT gave me a similar answer. I choosing not to cut and paste it here because…what’s really the point of writing if I want to let AI do all the proverbial heavy lifting?
I like this idea – that free will and fate exist simultaneously. There are certain parts of our life that are determined by the choices we make. On the flip side, there are some things in life that are completely out of the hands of the individual. A combination of both of these ideas really makes the most sense. For me anyway…
Do you believe in fate/destiny?
Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like, comment and subscribe to my blog below. It’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media as well! Check out my most recent posts as well as some earlier, related posts:
- Sunday is borrowed time
- Teacher Armor and the Saturday Clearing
- The Extra Day: A Ten-Year Memory
- Of Training Wheels and Christmas Lights
- Charity Starts at Home (And I’m Back in My Childhood One)
The article “No Fate” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob
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