Fate vs. Free Will: What are your life choices?
If you believe in divination through horoscopes, probably at some point you have wondered who is the winner in the battle of destiny against free will. Perhaps there will never be a clear winner of this endless war and it will rage for eternity.
Fate has been defined as the force that is believed to predetermine events. It is the result or end result. Fate hints that you have no choice in the outcome of your life. Who you are, what you become, everything is predestined by fate. As soon as you come into existence, your future is fixed and irreversible. What the stars reveal in fortune telling is exactly the ending you will find. Fate does not give you the reins to change your future.
On the other hand, free will, the opponent of fate, gives you hope that you are somehow in charge of your own destiny. Free will can be interpreted as the power of independent choice and action. It allows you to make decisions that could alter what fate originally had in store for you. You may not always make smart decisions or choices, but the bottom line would be to trust the choices you made. Your end result would be of your own choosing. Fate would not be involved.
Much of what was originally believed to be in the hands of fate has now become a matter of free choice. The old saying, “fate chooses our relatives, we choose our friends” is no longer valid. At one point, you were convinced that your biological parents were predestined. You thought that fate gave you the family you have. Modern fertilization techniques have decidedly changed that security. Fate is no longer the only deliverer of babies. Free will will also deliver babies now.
If you receive a dire divination, you have the choice to make choices to alter that fortune or let fate have its way. Any decision is still a decision you make, so free will will prevail.
Perhaps you seem trapped in a dead-end job and the horoscope tells you not to make any serious changes. Well, you can follow your heart and find a job you love or stay in the same dream job. Your choice, your decision and your free will triumph again.
On the other hand, too much free will could be the cause of today’s high divorce rate. Instead of following your heart or destiny, you could choose certain traits for a permanent partner. Following intelligent reasoning and selecting a partner based on compatibility or other qualities rather than love destiny may be why the divorce courts are so busy.
Claudius, a Roman statesman, said: “Every man is the architect of his own destiny.” You are in control of your own destiny through the choices and decisions you make at every moment. Any divination prediction can be modified to result in a good or bad outcome. The battle of destiny against free will continues in all of us.