A More Personal Approach

What guides our lives?

Towards the end of sophomore year English class, we were reading Macbeth. I remember my teacher asking the class what we thought about the character's choices in the play. She asked if we believed fate or choice guided us.

At first I didn't understand what that had to do with anything. To me, Macbeth was this crazy man who killed people for power and ultimately went crazy. Now I realize that she was asking about the witches' prophecies.

Some background if you haven't read Macbeth: after winning a bloody war, three witches appeared to Macbeth and his friend. They promised Macbeth he would become king one day, among other things. Instead of waiting to become king, he kills the current king and is chosen as the next ruler.

My teacher had been asking us if Macbeth would have become king through fate(without killing anyone) or was it the choice to kill that made him king.

I tend to believe that it is both. Fate has an infinite number of possibilities laid out depending on the choices we make. Suppose I did my homework, then a chain of events begins that would have been different if I had neglected my work. My choice to do work gave me a new fate.

I feel, however, that this idea can also be considered science and therefore our lives are guided by only choice. Newton's third law does state that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. I feel that this goes beyond chemistry and physics but also into our day to day actions. If I choose not to do something then there will be consequences. It's just common sense. And I am open to different ideas but the romantic in me really wants fate to play a part in the prospect of life.

The last option would be that fate alone guides our lives. To me, this is probably the least probable and the one I hope is for sure not true. This would mean that if I didn't do something, that that action was preset. It would mean that everything we do or become was pre-decided by some higher being. I think this is almost infuriating; as humans we need a certain degree of control and this option would mean that we lose our individuality and freedoms.

I admit that I don't think very highly of fate so the next question would most likely be why choose to include it in my theory on what guides us? I think the most straightforward answer would be to say that I am afraid. I am afraid that when my life doesn't end up the way I want it to, I'll have no one to blame but myself. I think the idea that if my life ends up somewhere I don't want to be, that at that point I can still blame a portion of it on fate, is reassuring. Perhaps this is my biggest downfall as a human but we will go into that another time.

One last thing on fate: we are all predestined to die. No matter what choices we make, what paths of destiny we end up going down, death is the only certainty. It is the one point at which fate will always win. Humans just don't have the ability to live forever.

I'm not entirely sure where I was trying to go with this rant but I guess these are just my thoughts on the subject. What do you think? What guides you?

xoxo,

~fatsotheawesome🕊