Mentalechoes

Do you believe in fate, Neo?
No.
Why not?
Because I don’t like the idea that I’m not in control of my life.
Larry and Andy Wachowski, “The Matrix”

I have been thinking a lot about fate and my destiny over the last couple of months. There have been a number of things that have happened in life and invariably I find myself asking; what is the purpose to me being here, and is it fate that I am here in this place at this time? Yesterday while making coffee I think I found the answer to whether we live lives that are predetermined by fate, or whether we choose our own fate based on our free will.

My mum always used to talk about fate and destiny a lot, and say that things happen for a reason. That there was no such thing as a chaotic or random event in life. She’s a wise woman, my ole Ma, so I took a lot of her personal wisdom into my own world view. This thing about fate though is something that has always intrigued me. I used to believe that our paths in life were predestined to some extent, and that we were in preordained places at preordained times to make something happen. However the big realisation came when I was thinking about how we are all beings with our own free will. To have free will means that we are not automatons acting only according to some sort of genetic programming, like an ameoba (assuming an amoeba is just a single celled automaton and has no higher degree of self awareness that we know of). Our free will means we act according to our own desires which coalesce into action by creating forces of motivation within our hearts and minds. As our desires change, so to do our motivations, thus do our actions. So to be in possession of free will means that our destiny cannot be entirely predetermined. Because the only way for a higher power - like fate - to guarantee we will do something at a specific time and specific place is to remove free will from the beings in question. That way there is no random element that can screw things up. But since we do have free will, that means that, if there is a Fate, the best it can do is influence our desires to form a particular motivation that will coalesce into activity working towards a certain outcome that it desires!

Whether you believe in the bible or not - and I literally don’t to be honest - that story about Eve taking a bite from the apple on the tree of knowledge illustrates perfectly why Fate or Destiny is not absolute. She was told not to, and she did anyway! Regardless of some snake whispering in her ear, the chick went against the plan and altered her own destiny.

I feel like Neo in that I believe that we are masters of our own destiny, and we are not servants to some higher power. Whatever path we walk, we walk because we choose too, not because it has been chosen for us. And the only will that we need to contend with to acheive our dreams, is our own!

Padwanna!