Choose

How many times have you heard of this situation: A rare incident occurs in someone’s life, such as falling in love or being offered a golden opportunity, and they carelessly utter, “its destiny”, not realizing that on doing so they are forfeiting their free will. Why is their freedom at stake here from citing a simple common expression? Well, if it truly is destiny, then that means their path in life, from the day they were born till that special moment, had been a master plan designed for them to reach that moment of fate. Stretch the imagination a little bit more and take it to its extreme: What if everything we do in life is already decided? What if, what we think are our own choices, are already pre-written in some fantastical book that cannot be erased, or overwritten. For every crossroad we come across in our lifetime, the path we take has already been decided. It seems quite frightening when one considers it to be a possibility in reality, and hence why most of us prefer to put our faith in the  concept of freewill, where our choices are our own and our feet choose the road taken, rather than some supernatural plan for life, the universe, and everything in between.

The idea of predestination was always there; it just wasn’t given worldwide acclaim until it was dug up by John Calvin, creator of the protestant religion Calvinism in the 16^th century. He lit a torch under the principle when he pored over the scriptures of Christianity and came to this conclusion: In short, it states that all peoples are divided into the elect and the rest. The elect are those chosen by God to go to heaven upon their death. The rest go to hell. God knows all, that cannot be debated, and so God knows who will enter heaven even before they are born. Hence if you are not part of the elect, then no matter what you do in life, even if you are the holiest of saints, you have already been marked for purging in the fiery pits of hell. Quite dreadful isn’t it? It’s even more harrowing to know that Calvin didn’t make any of this up. He took it straight from the scriptures of God. What more reliable source is there than that, one could ask? Controversial as it is, since it’s basically implying babies are destined to go to hell, one can take his belief a step further. What if all our lives have been predetermined instead of just our final destination; Every choice, every step, every word, all are written down in a vast book on some vast shelf, in some vast library in that proverbial heaven in the sky. It would certainly explain a few things, no matter how much we would like to refute it.

For one thing: premonitions, déjà-vu and psychic powers; anything to do with future sight, now make sense in a way. The future is already there, laid out in beautiful screenshots which can be tapped into by a mind strong enough to break the barrier of real-time consciousness--the present. A psychic is just flipping a few pages ahead in your book to read your future. When you feel you’ve done something or been somewhere before when you haven’t: a phenomena called Déjà-Vu, is actually a forgotten record left in the back of your mind conceived long before the actual event. When the event takes place, the record suddenly switches on due to its ‘circumstantial’ similarity, reminding you of it as if you had been through the event before.  The record could have been tapped into during your dreams, a function of your subconscious, which is sad to say a topic we still know too little about and what it’s fully capable of.

One can’t fool destiny, if that’s what you’re thinking by now. By its very definition it is impossible, as destiny has already decided for you that at any given moment you will take this or that path, even if it’s not expected of you.  You also can’t change it, because it is unchangeable. Pop culture loves to romanticize this concept, as can be seen in countless movies. Guy meets girl holidaying in Paris, they fall in love, girl gives guy her number on a piece of paper (even though it’s the 21^st century and everyone has a phone now), guy loses number in freak laundry accident, girl thinks guy doesn’t care and moves on with her life, twelve years later they meet in the exact same place, fall in love again, get married and have a cute child naming her destiny. You get the point…

Short of sounding like a horror-story so far, the polar opposite of predestination is also a possibility, and a more plausible one at that. Freedom of will is real. The world is an open book, ready to be scribed into with the ink of your footprints, for every path, every choice is yours and yours alone to make. You are not caged by a paved road that you must follow at all costs. You are your own master and nothing controls your future except for your own actions and decisions.

However, one who accepts complete free will must also accept this: There is no destiny for humanity. You must take responsibility for all your actions and abide by their consequences.  Every roll of a dice is random and unknown. Sure, there are statistics and probabilities for every occurrence, but they are purely mathematical and void of any master design or higher purpose.

The probability of you bumping into a childhood friend you once knew on the other side of the planet is a number that cannot be really calculated, but we can all agree is a vast one. When it does happen, it is merely ‘the dice falling into place as they are rolled’; since it can be said we are constantly rolling dice with every action we make. Given that we roll so many, these coincidences will invariably happen from time to time. Luck can’t be real; Luck is really based on the mathematical science of probabilities. Rolling an infinite number of dice will eventually bring you a hundred six’s in a row, no matter how unlikely. Hence with the existence of all the vastness of humanity and all their actions, the probability of there being some humans always ‘winning’ or always ‘losing’ in their lifetime is expected to happen.

Someone has a dream of an acquaintance’s impending death, only to find it come true the next day. Is that mere coincidence? Perhaps there is something else involved here, like tapping into a collective unconscious and interpreting a vibe that the person’s soul is sending out that it is the moment of their passing. That is a whole other discussion to be dug into another time. Whatever it is, it cannot be a premonition, because the future cannot possibly be known.

Finding your perfect partner from billions on the planet? Here’s an explanation for that: You are in fact meeting new people all the time, looking for this person anyway; filtering out the undesirables until that special someone fulfills the criteria you have placed to be your perfect partner. He/She has obviously done the same, since in reality, you matched each other with both of your filtering processes. There are probably millions of people on the planet that would suit your partner in love. The dice roll said it’s you.

Strangely enough, both doctrines breed the same kind of person, whether he or she chooses to embrace the extremes of one ideology or the other. Take a person who accepts destiny for what it is, a controller of all their choices, for they have no say in the matter. This person can become fearless, for they have nothing to fear but their own fate, which is out of their hands. Why dread death when it has already been written when and how they will perish. They can do what they like, for all they are doing is placing their feet onto the prints ahead of them, following a guided path that they cannot stray from. They don’t have to make any real choices, and hence they possess a carefree attitude. Let that higher purpose choose their fate; they will live life nonetheless.

Now take a person of the extreme who accepts freedom of will. They are free spirits, creators of their own fate, taking every day, every moment of life with fresh vigor. They have all their life to live by the moment, as if every day might be their last. No task is too small or too great, for their potential is limitless. The aphorism of Carpe Diem comes to mind here, as it should, as they are unbounded by the rules or fears that so control our daily lives.

The point I have been trying to make with this comparison is that the end result is the same no matter what we choose. But as long as I still see people afraid to try new things, or scared to meet new people, or realize their dreams, then my point is not reached. These people are hanging by threads in a balance between the extremes of two basic ways of life that are as inevitable as the air we breathe and the earth we stand upon. If they cannot accept the one or the other then they will glide through life with a constant fear in their hearts, looking over their shoulders for death to visit them, past memories to haunt them, and lost passions to torment them.

It doesn’t matter which you choose, but at least choose: The principle of freewill or of predestination. Embrace either one or the other and you will end up the same person; a person that lives.