Fate or Coincidence?
Today I’d like to write on fate for a moment. Can a thing be fated to be? What is the difference between fate and coincidence? Is there any difference?
Many of you may know that I was a philosophy student in undergraduate college. As a philosophy student I was, and in many ways still am, committed to the study of logic and how we might use that logic to derive conclusions about the reality of the world: X = Y if and only if X also = Q. As part of these studies I intellectually convinced myself that fate is a myth, a creation by humanity to explain the many random occurrences, positive or negative, that come upon us and have a major effect on our existence. To say, “There is nothing that could be done, it was fated to happen,” is nonsense. By the denial of fate, all events are merely coincidences, thoughts of predetermined events that must occur in our reality because of some outside manipulation of events (be that by God, some universal bond, or any other superhuman power) is merely a fabrication created to bring order to the chaos in which we live.
Period.
Academically, I can agree to this. Intellectually, I am satisfied by this. Logically this makes sense. Through reason I can conclude there is no reason to the natural world, no order to things.
And that is what I think – until fate intervenes. A moment might occur: a meeting, an event, a revelation; when every instant shows itself to be nothing less then perfection. Every word, breath, gesture, thought, leaves your mind – your soul – with an eloquence that exceeds any expectation you could hold for yourself on the best of days. This is not you acting. You are not controlling the jumble tumbling out of your soul and it cannot be a coincidence, there is too much prepared perfection.
It is at these moments that I cannot help but attempt to deny that my mind is intellectually superior to any belief. I feel called to refute the impossibility of fate. The coincidences are so tightly intertwined that the possibility – no – the probability of an ethereal force directing some play in which we all take part seems as if though it must be. It would be nonsensical to deny what we had termed as nonsense. We term it fate: the night could not have not happened; the phone was destined to ring, it had to be him; I was drawn to her.
But logic has the somber tendency of stretching its cold, calculated fingers around time, reminding us never to place hope in some glorified disturbance of reason. It does not intend to be crushing, vicious, or cruel. The only purpose is to remind us of the world in which we live, to keep us grounded, practical. The flawlessness of fate will dwindle away, while the scabs and scars of reality reveal themselves. The fallacious fantasy of reality, formed of our mind, fades away, revealing that the delicate dream that is all that remains. Reality mocks us, taunting our hope for magic, our longing for some reason to explain wistful wonderings.
Yet somehow many of us hold onto fate. No longer a likelihood, not even a real probability, but a mere…
A mere…
I cannot grant it a title. I shall not force any subjective restrictions, created by our language, upon it. And I will not let go of it. This empty dream that can seem to have less then no logical reality remains in the recesses of my mind: fully recognized as nonsense, but not dismissed. It is a fool’s fantasy with no hope of defying the reality in which I live, unless, or course, it does.
Or is that only a coincidence?