There is something that I have been thinking a lot about recently and it has to do with life itself. If you think about life in terms of probabilities, there are literally an infinite number of ways it can happen from the moment you are born.

In fact, even the event of your birth itself (time, place, family to which you are born, etc.) is one amongst an infinite number of ways the event could have happened and your further life was influenced by it greatly.

We like to believe that we have free will and we can take our life in the direction we want making conscious decisions at every point along the way. There is however a popular concept of destiny or fate which says that everything is pre-determined.

So, I have been doing a lot of thinking regarding this. Are our lives ruled by our own free will or do we all come with our own destinies? Or is it both? Is that even possible?

Are We In Control?

We humans like to believe that we have control over every little decision we take and that our lives are determined by the effects of those decisions, in a cause and effect relationship. Many people believe that fate has nothing to do with it. It’s all our actions.

But how do we know that we indeed have free will? If our whole lives were in fact pre-determined, our actions and the freedom over them could appear to us as free will while in reality, it would only be an illusion.

Also, let’s say time travel were ever to be invented, and we could freely go to the future and the past. That would raise questions about free will too. I mean, the very presence of a future (that you can go to and come back) would mean that things are already pre-destined, right?

What I think personally, is that we are actually in control and have total free will. At any given time we have an infinite number of ways to head into, and through conscious decision making, we are shaping our future.

Is Everything Pre-Determined?

Now, for this principle to be true, there has to be a higher entity in some form or manner. Generally it’s believed to be god who has a plan for each of us down here on the planet.

It would explain why you were born in the family you were and why you met the love of your life when you did, and the way you did. Coincidence has no place in such a belief system.

In my mind, there is an obvious question that arises and that is the ‘why’ of it. Why would a higher entity make plans for 7.5 billion people and leave us all to play out their drama? Wouldn’t this make life meaningless as there is literally nothing we can do to escape the ‘roles’ and the ‘futures’ we have been assigned to?

People who do not believe in fate often say that, fate can simply be explained by ‘chance’. So, the people that you meet, the things that happen to you, and everything else, was just chance. One event out of an infinite number of possibilities.

Could It Be Both?

The idea that both these principles could be at work might sound counter-intuitive but could it be that we have free will under a much larger framework of destiny?

Let’s say some of the more profound events of your life were destined to happen and the ways you get there would be dependent on your free will. One could argue that it still isn’t true free will as no matter what you do, you would have to go through the set milestones of your life.

As you can see, thinking about all this can be too complicated and the most unfortunate thing is that, we just can’t be sure whether it’s one or the other. Well, who knows maybe one day.

What do you guys think? Is our life ruled by fate or do we have absolute free will? Do tell in the comments section down below!