anyway, maybe some examples will help clear my mind:
It seems painfully obvious that certain things are 'destined' so to speak. For instance, the fact that I have XY chromosomes instead of XX. I'm pretty sure I didn't have a say in what gender I wanted to be. When the sperm met the ovum - it's highly unlikely that these 2 gametes sat down, had a discussion and decided what they would form right?
I also was destined to be in my family, to be born in Malaysia, to have chronic eczema, to have 3 testicles...nah, kidding about the last one :P
What I did have a 'choice' in however were the courses I wanted to take, how I lived my daily life, going for a week to Redang to help save the turtles, getting a PS2, writing this blog among others.
So it does seem that there are such things as destinies and choices. Yet...if you think further, another theory is that everything is predestined. In this case everything really means everything. All the possible paths you could take during your life has been preordained - the difference is in which path you 'choose' to take. In this case is anything you do truly a 'free choice' so to speak?
Take the friends that you love and care about. Remember how you met them and developed a relationship?
Now think about this. If free choice really exists, then your meeting was simply due to pure chance - probability, if you will. It so happened that you both chose your current course and met and decided to forge a friendship. Had you have chosen a different course, you would not have met this person but probably met a different person.
If it was decreed that the 2 of you would meet, then obviously you 2 would meet, somehow or another, no matter what course you are doing wherever in the world no?
What about karma then? Is it possible that due to events in your past lives, in the current one you meet? Is this then destiny?
So I currently figure that there are a few possible explanations:
- <>Destiny is determined by some higher power
- <>Destiny is events in your past life that have shaped your current life
- Certain things are predestined and others are choices
- Everything that happened is purely due to chance, you got where you are by choosing your path
....my head aches...
3 comments:
you have to develop the idea of chance more, i think.
does destiny justify our existence here and give us more of a reassurance than chance does, which make us just seem random and accidental?
there's a beauty in chance, which gives us pleasant surprises, and the 'oh-we-made-it-this-far-and-with-such-unexpected-detours-too'. i think the idea of destiny is too much of a responsibility to carry, like 'to have to fulfil a destiny'. to view it otherwise, it would be, oh everything is pre-planned, which could lead to a fatalistic attitude.
i suppose the conclusion i would like to come to is that i believe in chance rather than destiny, and the possibility that there is probably no reason at all for my existence, but too bad, i'm around so make the most of it :D
Life is about choices. A baby was not destined to be anywhere - his or her parent(s) choose whether to have him or her (or abort, pretty much). A product of someone else's choices does not mean destiny. You may choose a birthday present for a friend, but that does not mean the friend is destined to have that present. It was your choice to give it. If you meet somebody, were you destined to meet that somebody or was that meeting just a product of your choice to go outside that day? Action and reaction.
As for XX and XY... isn't it all about the survival of the fittest amongst the sperms? Perhaps there's no higher function that determines which choice to take, but the basic instinct in every single living being, every single cell of our body is to survive. Even cancer cells want to survive. And they try every single way to do so.
I suppose we are genetically programmed to do that, but is that destiny? Sometimes I think it's just the infallible universal theory of inertia because we're scared of death. Death is a change, different from what we know, and we're just a lot more comfortable with the thought of continuing being alive because that is all that we know, so we struggle to cling on to it. Something that is living will keep living unless an external force (ie death, disease, old age, malnutrition, etc) acts upon it. :D
I think I remember too many crap from Physics class. Heh.
I also think it is quite hard to argue AGAINST the idea of destiny, because anything can be destiny. You can call it destiny and there will be no way to prove it wrong unless you find an alternate reality where you have not made a particular choice in the past and your future has turned out differently (or has turned out the same, and in that case Destiny will have been proven). And perhaps one can argue that action leading to reaction is destined to be, or does destiny determines who exactly is the fittest to survive?
What we know is that we have choices, and while it may be destined what we end up being in the end, it's nice to think that we somehow have some sort of control over which path our feet will tread on next. Or else, what is the point (or the joy) of living and discovering new things if everything has been written out like a book? Destiny is only someone's excuse not to take responsibility for their actions, and their reason not to make their own choices.
"Destiny is only someone's excuse not to take responsibility for their actions, and their reason not to make their own choices."
hahaha, sweet :)
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