You Have all heard of Fate

(I think this is good for a first post)

You have all heard of fate, the idea that your life is already planned for you and everything that happens happens because of a divine plan. I believe the future cannot be foretold; however it can be predicted. If you knew someone was thinking horid and sick thoughts of murdering their wife, what would you do? You would probably warn his wife. Your are making a prediction. However a prediction is not a prophecy.

I believe in fate, as a god. It can be Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim or Hindu, it doesn't matter, the fact is it is there. You call fate God, then do so. If you can call fate Buddha then do so, I however shall call it fate.

Fate is up there my friends, but not the in the popular way most people believe. Fate can control our lives to an extent, |karma| also comes into play as well. Our world has a set of rules governed by fate, without them the world would be utter chaos. Trust me it would be nothing like it is today. Let me start this off with a personal experience. I have trouble remembering my experiences with fate, but they are so vivid when they happen. One, however, I can remember real nicely. My friend and I were supposed to go to a party of a friend of mine. I invited this friend, we can call him Jacob, and he was supposed to meet me at the intersection of two buses right next to his house. One bus, named the 5, went up and down town. The other bus, named the 28, went across town.

So my friend talked to his parents and took an exuberantly long time. He finally said he could go and I reviewed the meeting place and time with him and set off, leaving the house later than I had planned earlier that morning. So I wait for the bus a bit and it comes, this is the 5 by the way. I get on the 5-bus and take it down to the intersection previously mentioned. My friend is not there, no worries he is always late. Then the bus we're supposed to take, the 28 is coming in the distance. This bus would take us to the mall so I can buy my friend a birthday present (were going ot a party remember.) And me without a cell phone I can do nothing but wait. The bus passes.

What am I supposed to do? I don't wanna ditch Jacob. Then a 5 goes by. That is the bus that would take me to my friend?s party. Aggravated I say Ill wait till the next 5 comes and if he?s still not here yet I'll leave without him. Sure enough he doesn't show. So I see a 5 coming, I run after it and it slows down and lets me on. I get on kind of depressed I had to ditch my friend.

I turn around, and guess who?s behind me? Jacob of course. Now that deserves a big :O
So I left my house at just the right time, waited just the right amount of time, and my friend was late just the right amount of time.

Fate my friend.
What would have happened if he wasn't late? Well we probably would have gone to the mall to get my friend a present. What if the bus we were on, had a problem with it? What if 2 more people had gotten on that bus it would have exploded because of a crack in the casing?
No these conclusions aren't likely, however It did infact affect the course of our day. How? We can never know. However our being a little later probably affected the course of our day. Good or Bad? No one will knows but fate. Was there a reason? Yes.

Almost everything happens for a reason, I don't believe that scratching your left testicle instead of your right has any effect on anything. However almost everything else does. For example I've had a pretty sordid love life in the past (note I am 14) I've had about 5 unsuccessful relationships. Also my social life wasn't very good either. (im not complaining). Now if my love life and social life was just as good as everyone elses, would I be the same person I am today? Nope not at all. Back then I was an attention whoring little prat. But the toughness of my life shaped me and made me who I am today. Corny as it sounds its true. Almost everything happens for a reason, and don't tell me otherwise.

Now as I mentioned not everything is certain. I could have hopped on that first 5 that went by, totally ditching my friend. I believe I could have. However thats not how things were meant to be, or perhaps its an alternate wake of life. Perhaps my friend would not have accompanied me to the party, perhaps he wouldn?t have met my friends, perhaps I would have never talked to Jacob again?

So if you make a bad decision, that?s were karma comes in. What goes around comes around. Do something bad you'll probably get it in return. Mom tells you to finish eating in the kitchen; she turns around and goes down stairs. What do you do? You take your food into your room, then accidentally spill soup all over yourself. Mom told you not to take it into your room and you got punished. Will mom ever know? Probably not.

What if I ditched my friend? What if I never saw him again? I'd miss him, and that would be a pretty bad punishment for ditching him.

Faulty priming. Have you ever had a coincidence happen that in know way affected anything? You most likely did, but didn't notice. Say you get a B on one of your tests. Then you come home and the "B" key on your keyboard flies out of its place. Coincidence? Nope. I believe this to be a by-product of fates working. It doesn't mean anything it just happens. I remember things like this happening. They don't mean much.

Fate is all around us, you just gotta keep your eyes open. When you are depressed its for a reason, and you'll see that later iny our life. I like to believe that after we're done with this life we go to paradise. I can't stand the idea of whamped out of existence. What is paradise? A scientificly different universe, a little like ours. Infinite borders, but with different rules.

Have you ever had a Fate-esque experience?
Witnessed faulty programming?
Questions?
Rants?
Raves?
Opinions?
Amendments?
Other ideas?

Is lifes destiny pre-determined and plotted before we enter this world.

I think yes, in religous matters and other. Even before I became as steady in my beliefs as I am now, I still felt life events were going to progress despite what occured. Call it "life contracts" as Silvia so says, or Gods plan. We can control or manipulate what happens now, and only now. One second ago is too late, and we are never really sure what is to come. We can however learn from what has happened, to be more ready if we so choose.

I'm very skeptic about fate, I don't think that anyone person has a certain set path in life. But I sometimes do believe in coincidence and luck. My Grandpa was in the Navy and was going to be shipped to Korea, he manned artillary on ships, as he was going to get on the boat, he was held back on the land for not completing his cleaning duties or something like that. When the ship got to sea, it was attacked and sunk, killing every single person on the ship. That story always sticks in the back of my head when I think of fate, because if he would have died, my dad wouldn't have been born and in effect neither would have I. Whether it is luck or not I will never know. It just goes to show that even though I'm very skeptical of fate, you can never actually disprove it.

Fate would be a force then. Therefore chaos would be the counterforce, since all things in nature have a opposite.

If they are forces, then they can both be manipulated and countered. If fate says something is to happen, chaos can reinterpret or deny.

Whether and individual can summon enough force of his own to oppose both?? not sure.

But I don't see Fate as much an external force as one from within. All my life, what I most dread seems to happen. Some might simply say it's self fulfilling prophecy, others may claim real prophecy.

In the tradition of dualism, one could say that the nature of the Universe is to fill Voids with perfect fits.

Empirically (as I've said before on here) I think we can see that fearing the worst, often brings it about. This can work on a collective level too. I cite the build up and panic over Y2K. Nothing happened. It took a while, but 9/11/01 could be seen as filling the void we created in our worst fears.

Not to get political, but this same view could say that a fear of Terror breeds terror.... to an extent anyway.

But to the anecdotal, yes, when I think I'm about to wreck my car...I wreck my car. When I think a realtionship is headed south, it does. This is more obvious than anything. But "Fate" is what we call retrospect in many cases, of realization of fears.

I've been on a low fate diet for quite some time. My locus of control is as internal as they come.

But then again...

The Monkees (of course)

I thought love was only true in fairy tales
Meant for someone else but not for me.
Love was out to get me
That�s the way it seemed.
Disappointment haunted all my dreams.

Then I saw her face, now I�m a believer
Not a trace of doubt in my mind.
I�m in love, I�m a believer!
I couldn�t leave her if I tried.

I thought love was more or less a given thing,
Seems the more I gave the less I got.
What�s the use in tryin�?
All you get is pain.
When I needed sunshine I got rain.

Then I saw her face, now I�m a believer
Not a trace of doubt in my mind.
I�m in love, I�m a believer!
I couldn�t leave her if I tried.




[Edited on 10-12-2003 by MaskedAvatar]