No Fate and No Destiny

Last night, I was sipping some drinks with a couple of friends at Castille Square. We were using the outdoor tables and chairs of The Beer Cave. I was having Amaretto. I love Amaretto. One of my two friends was having Black Label, and the other one was having Gin & Tonic. It was around 2 a.m. when the Gin & Tonic girl said something about fate and destiny to which I immediately replied that I don’t believe in such things. That single comment sparked a very long and exhausting debate.

One of the greatest and everlasting debates of humanity has been about the role of destiny in the lives of human beings. There was a time when it was almost an accepted fact of life, that each and every event was governed by destiny. Astrology was considered a science. Then with the advent of modern times, the importance of the role of destiny as a concept started losing weight. Today, belief in destiny is considered a superstition by the majority of people. And rightly so, since there seems to be no evidence for the irrevocability of destiny and fate.

Human beings possess free will. All our successes, failures and actions are governed by the decisions we take. We have the option to take decisions using our free will. Fate is a superstition, and it can be regarded as a psychological defence system to cope with the failures in life.

Whenever you fail in some endeavour, or whenever something happens which is not in accordance with your wish, you use it as a convenient scapegoat. You say, it was your bad luck which caused you to fail. Otherwise, how could you fail? You are never ready to accept that it was only you who was responsible for the failure. It may have been due to some bad planning, lack of efforts in the right direction, or outright failure to correctly judge the realities of your goal. But since it hurts to accept that you were the one who committed the mistake, you take shelter behind the concept of fate, and blame it on your karma. This relieves you of the terrible pain of knowing and accepting the defeat.

There is no such thing as fate. We should believe in ourselves. This is the only logical way of thinking. And I completely refute the idea that all events are predetermined by a hidden supernatural power. We are NOT just like instruments in some grand design and nothing else! None of our thoughts and actions are predestined.