Destiny or Choices?

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Destiny, if you search for the meaning of the word, you might end up looking at a few different meanings. But in general, in the context of our everyday lives, destiny is something that is to happen in the future. It may be causal. "I wonder what lies in my destiny.", "I wonder where my destiny would lead me.", these are quite regular thoughts for everybody. But what exactly is destiny? Is it something that is already out there pre-written for us? Is the destiny of an individual a fixed path? 

I often stumble upon these same thoughts. But everything in nature depends on the past, or some cause, just like the butterfly effect. Wikipedia definition of it in chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state. If we take the butterfly effect and apply it to our destiny, would it make sense? Absolutely! If a tiny butterfly flapping its wings could be the cause of a tornado somewhere else, so is our destiny.

Picture Credits: SAM

The choices we make may seem small but they could result in large differences in our destiny. We tend to think that the choices we make are determined by our destiny. "It was in my destiny, hence I walked into that coffee shop that fine day where I met the love of my life", "Destiny made me reject that job offer, else I would have regretted my whole life". Such thoughts are natural. It is maybe embedded into us humans, that we tend to find something to blame/rely on for our fortune as well as misfortunes. 

So if our destiny is pre-determined for us, why do we have a hard time making a few big choices in life? In my personal experience and opinion, the path to our destiny is paved by the choices we make every day in our lives. The choices carve out a path through forests, mountains, and oceans in our lives. Believing in destiny instills us with a sense of hope for a better future, but is it? The Sanskrit word Karma, which has found its way into the vocabulary of the world is often used to define the spiritual principle of cause and effect. 

If believing in destiny and karma are the same, aren't they contradictory? Destiny might be causal, but Karma is strictly causal. When I was a kid, I dreamt of being a Formula 1 engineer, traveling the whole world with the motorcade, work on building one of the most complex machines in the world. I detested the thought of being associated with software engineering. Wind the clock 20 years ahead and here I am working as a software developer. It is the last thing I ever wanted to be. Do I hope that destiny has something else in mind for me in this field? Or something entirely different is awaiting me? Or do I look back into the past and look at the choices I have made that led me to this path? I would strongly incline to the second thought.

Our destiny might be predetermined. If you want to sit on your couch at home and wait for your destiny to lead you to be a millionaire, I am sorry, it would never work out. There would come a point where you would make a choice, it might be as simple as buying a few stocks online, or really working hard to land a high-paying job. That one choice might reshape your destiny. We would never know if it was the result of our choices or destiny. 

-Sushant Thotakura


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