Is Everything Predestined In Life?
By Anubhav Srivastava. (Register For His Workshop – Super Confidence For Super Success)
Is Everything Predestined In Life? There have been differing views on this. One says that everything has been predetermined and we have no control over anything that we do. The second says that our destiny is in our hands and what we get will be the result of our actions.
In life we see evidence of both destiny and action playing their role. We see the best possible things happening to the worst people and the worst possible things happening to the best people. It seems like it is happening because of destiny. At the same time we also see rewards of hard work actually paying off, even if it takes years to happen. Thus action seems to influence fate as well at times. However, there would be others that argue that there are millions of other people who did not get anything in return for their efforts.
In this article I will examine the concept of destiny and try to come to a logical conclusion about the question that all of us have wondered at some point. Is everything predestined in life?
So what exactly is Destiny?
Theory One – It’s all about Probability
If we go the scientific route, we can call it a matter of probability. If we take a thousand people or situations, not everyone will be the same or have the same life. Some people are going to be extremely talented, some people will not be so and most people will be average. When it comes to looks, some will be extremely good looking, others will be extremely ugly and most people will be average. That’s just how the world or even the universe works. In our very own galaxy, some stars are extremely massive giants, while others are extremely tiny, most of them however, are quite average (relatively speaking) and our sun is one of them.
So statistically speaking most people are going to experience to average luck but then there are going to be outliers who experience terribly good luck and terribly bad luck. Thus, according to this explanation, destiny is not a matter of some creator casting your fate in stone but it’s a matter of probability.
Theory 2 – Everything you face in life, whether positive or negative is result of your past actions or Karma
Then we come to the concept of Karma or the belief that what you get in life is a result of past action. There is certainly evidence of this as what goes around seems to come around, but not always? And then certain things happen for absolutely no reason at all, things we would normally attribute to destiny or probability? How do you explain those thing?
Well according to Karma what happens to us in this life is not solely the result of our actions of this life but also the cumulative result of our actions of the past. So according to that belief, in this life amazingly if amazingly good things happen to you for no reason in this life, it is a result of your Good Karma from past lives. If terribly bad things happen to you in this life, it is a result of your bad karma from past lives.
Whether the law of Karma from the past life aspect to destiny is true or not, I do not know. However, what I do not like about it is that it leads people to blame the sinful actions of their past lives ( of which we have absolutely no proof) for all the ills that are happening in their lives today for no reason. This kind of thinking only lowers someone’s self esteem further instead of building their self belief if they start believing that all the ills they are facing in their life today is because they were a sinful person in the past. For all we know, it may simply be a game of probabilities as mentioned above.
Theory 3 – Everything is Fixed and Predetermined. You have no control over anything.
The final theory about destiny is that everything that ever happened or will happen has already been set in stone. It has nothing to do with our actions. A conscious creator God or maybe even an undiscovered scientific phenomenon has already ensured that whatever is to happen will happen no matter. Everything has already been sealed in stone, including our own actions.
The problem with this theory is that it leaves us with no free will. If this is indeed the case, should we ever be admired for anything positive that we do or be punished for anything negative, after all it was predestined, right?
More importantly, should a person ever be punished for any wrong things that are done. For example committing fraud or even murder!
If some drives drunk and then later rams their car into someone on the road, is it the person’s fault, is it destiny’s fault or is it the pedestrian’s bad karma that brought it upon them? What control do we have over our lives anyway?
If this is true, it would mean we are robots, we have absolutely no control over what happens to us, worse, we do not even have any control over what we do. Everything is pre-programmed!
But Theory Three is not exactly correct
Luckily for us, there seems to be some some scientific evidence that says that destiny is not fixed. The evidence is found in Quantum Physics. Quantum Physics is basically a branch of physics which deals with things that happen at the tiniest of scales. We are talking about atoms and photons.
Quantum physics differs from Classical physics in the sense that while in Classical Physics, every behavior of an object can be predicted through a set of laws. For example, the motion of a cannon ball, the orbit of a planet etc. Everything is operating through a set of laws and once you figure out the law, prediction is a piece of cake. In other words, the future behavior is already certain.
That is not the case in Quantum physics. The behavior of objects at a very tiny scale is not the same as the behavior of larger objects. It is impossible to predict the future behavior of objects such as electrons like you could in classical physics. They can be in one place or another place or even many places at once!
What is more interesting is that in recent years, many macroscopic quantum phenomena have been discovered. In other words randomness and unpredictability has been scientifically been observed on a large scale. Thus there is a strong possibility that every action we take has not already been completely predetermined. There may truly be an element of randomness in our decisions and actions. We may indeed have some free will!
We may not like to do physical activities in general (predetermined) but we have the conscious choice to still get up and exercise and lose that fat.
Our sensory buds maybe tempted when we see ice cream or chocolate but we still have the choice to not eat it.
Quantum physics opens up the possibility of randomness in our action. But what about things that are clearly not in our control? Well because quantum physics is indeed probabilistic, it also gives some credibility to the probability theory of destiny.
Thus our destiny seems to be influenced by things that are already determined (For example, our Genes), Probability (Random events happening) and Free Will In Our Actions.
A farmer has to plant the crops to expect any reward. But then he also needs water at the right time and in the right quantity and in countries like India people depend on rain to provide water. If it it doesn’t happen, or happens at the wrong time, or happens in too high a quantity, things will go wrong.
If you rely on a method that may or may not work then there are always chances of it going wrong. That doesn’t necessarily mean it was predestined, it may be because statistically when you depend on something that is not under your control, then sometimes things will not be to your favor.
What if someone without the proper knowledge of aerodynamics and proper safety equipment made a plane. That plane may take off but because enough effort has not been put into its making to ensure that it meets all safety guidelines and there are structural defects in it, it will crash. It doesn’t mean it was predestined to crash because God meant it to be. It was destined to crash because it was not designed properly.
Thus my point is that, yes, there are some things that are pre determined. But you have the power to influence your fate, at least to some degree through your actions. You can blame destiny if you had absolutely NO control over what happened. But if the outcome was the result of your actions or the lack of your actions, blaming it on destiny is lazy.
Here is my final view on Destiny
If you get into an accident through absolutely no fault of your own it maybe a random event in your destiny. If you drive drunk and then crash, it is macroscopic quantum phenomena in the form of your stupidity.
If you lose all your money because the stock market crashed or because of uncontrollable circumstances, it is not your fault. If you are a spendthrift and become broke, it is not your destiny, it is your stupidity.
If you get a life threatening disease because of your genes, it is not your fault. If you overeat, become obese and then get diseases or if you smoke and end up getting cancer because of smoking, it is not destiny. It’s your fault.
The “destiny” excuse only makes sense if something happened that was absolutely not under your control. Or if you genuinely gave something your 500 percent, made all the right choices in the right direction for a really long time and it still did not become a reality.
But if you make the wrong choices or do not put in enough effort and leave things to chance, then don’t blame destiny when things don’t happen the way you wanted. Chance favors those who leave nothing to chance. Ultimately, the greatest fortune teller for your life is your own attitude towards it. You can indeed Carve Your Destiny.
About the Author
Anubhav Srivastava is an author, speaker and the director of Carve Your Destiny, a first of its kind inspirational documentary featuring some of the most famous personalities from diverse fields. It has been seen by over One Million People on Youtube. Anubhav has also been featured in numerous International and India Media outlets such as BBC , The Times of India, Hindustan Times, Rediff.com, Leicester Mercury and many others.
For one on one consulting or a motivational workshop at your organization please email anubhav101@gmail.com . If you would like to write a guest blog post on Anubhavsrivastava.com you contact me on the same email address.
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