Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Fate versus Destiny - My Take

Ok, so I've gotten a couple of comments on this. This is my take.

I believe fate and destiny, while related, are different. To me, fate is unnavoidable. If you believe in fate or that you are fated to do something, nothing you can do, no choice you make, will change that. It will happen. You are fated to it.

Destiny, on the other hand, is what you are meant to do and that there are paths you can follow that will take you to your destiny, but there is no promise that you will meet it. I think if you listen to yourself and are just aware you know if you are on the right path to whatever your destiny may be. I also believe that you know damn well when you aren't on the right path, even if you choose not to listen.

Now neither of these talk to how your fate or destiny is set and that is a different subject all together.

I don't believe in fate but I do believe in destiny. To me, fate, as I defined it above, is just the easy way to avoid responsibility for your decisions and actions.

5 comments:

Silent Joe said...

Everyone has the same destiny. To Die. Other than that I can not agree with a pre-defined plan for you upon birth.

No mystical chalk board with your name that says "Soandso is suppose to do .... in there life".

We need to just face reality are realize we are just animals, just more evolved. There is no bigger force than us planning our life.

- Joe

Ryan said...

I'm not saying there is a pre-defined path, that is fate. I'm just saying you may have a particular destiny, an end-point, that you are here for. How you get there is up to you. Hell, you may not even find your way to that destiny, but it is there saying 'come to me, beavis'.

I suppose your destiny could be to just an example to others. ;)

CMS said...

After thinking about this some more, I have come to the conclusion that Socrete's would have loved your orignal question and tore it apart. There is no clear answer - at least not one with any concrete proof to offer.

No one can finitely prove that there is a force or God ( save the arguments) and no one can finitely prove that there isn't. I feel the same true of fate/destiny. Until someone shows you the script you can't say there is, but until you can explain the unexplainable, there leaves reasonable doubt that some other design may be present. Believe what you will.

As for there definitions and conotations - Webster says they are analogous.

It makes me thoughtful of the phrase "Everything happens for a reason" How do you know? Do things happen for something or merely because of something else?

The mud thickens.

Ryan said...

Yea, I tried to structure the question not as a universal truth but more in what it means to you. I was aware of what the dictionary had to say but I think these things can mean very different things to people. I have no idea if/what the universal truth for destiny/fate is but if what you believe helps you get through the day who is to say it isn't real?

Crazy Hippie Chick said...

Fate seems to me to be the way that our destiny ends. Only being in seventh grade I don't have the best expirience (or spelling:)) but if fate is how our journey through life ends, then destiny is the road to get there. For example, in ancient Greece, Cassandras destiny was to speak the future and her fate was to be killed by her lovers wife. All of us have a fate and destiny, but we can choose how control it. There is no one that is telling you how to live your life or what your purpose. I like to think of it as money. You can spend your destiny on anything you want, but your fate is an inevitable ending to your account. If you spend your life wisely you can put off fate for a while. I laugh out loud whenever someone says that it was fate that made something happen. It may have been lucky but fate had nothing to do with it.