Fate

The word FATE is an interesting one.  Webster's defines it, "as the will or principle or determining cause by which things in general are believed to come to be as they are or events to happen as they do; destiny." 

I don't believe in fate, or more accurately, I have trouble accepting that certain things are going to happen no matter what. I believe in the deliberate acts of others and the after effects of their actions. They aren't all as traumatic as what happened on 1-8-11 or on 9-11-01. When a person chooses upon a course of action, they weigh their options, ponder their own sense of why and what may or may not be the effect of their action, then they act. Simple as that.

It is not fate that has a police officer exit his car to face a criminal, a fireman to enter a burning building or a first aid rescuer to help another. A lot of their actions are the result of training and instinct. Sure there are influences, but ultimately you look in the mirror and make your choice. God gave us free will and we choose the actions that ultimately define who we are. I believe that sometimes that choice seems so natural, that one can feel as if it was destiny. 

I know and understand that sense of destiny. In a strange way, I am more comfortable with the idea of destiny. To me destiny is the path and not the destination that fate implies. You hear a voice, you cross the street, you look in her eyes, you smell her hair and it feels so perfectly natural, it had to be destiny. Maybe it was. I think it is the realization, where the acceptance and awareness of interests and similarities that are beyond more than normal, that God Himself had his hand in it. In the end, it still all comes down to decisions and choices, and those are not driven by fate or destined to happen. Who you are drives that.

I cannot accept as fate that my life went on the path that it took. That implies I had no control over it, or that how people chose to behave towards me was not within their control, that it was all fated to happen. If that were the case, then why make a phone call, why say hello, why help someone who needs help, why donate blood, or why ever bother to give love unconditionally. It wasn't fate that I was born into a family where I would grow up mentally and physically abused by a violent, alcoholic father. There were so many turns and forks in the road that I could have chosen to take. I made the choices that I made and they added more into that essence of who I am and am becoming.

There is an expression I once heard and I like it a lot. It goes like this: "We shouldn't be defined by what happens to us in life. Instead we should be defined by how we deal with what happens to us and by what we do next."

What choices have you made this day? How were you towards others? How will they see you from that? How will you see yourself? Was the goal of your actions good for all or just good for yourself? I'm not a religious person, but surely very spiritual. As I read my words, that spirituality comes out. Through it all, I can't be too focused on my destination, but very involved in my journey. How I walk my path matters just as much as how I navigate it and how I am towards others.