Do you believe in fate?

I don't think there's such a thing as fate. That would imply that our choices don't matter, everything is pre-ordained. That's a depressing thought - what would be the point if we're just playing bit parts in somebody's play?

 

Ummm; I'm not so sure...

 

Why about all the things that we don't notice? Did they happen for a reason? Who controls what we should notice and what we don't notice?

However I have found being nice to people goes a long way

 

No such thing as fate.

 

"There's no fate but what we make for ourselves." - Terminator 2

My brother and my brother in law are both living the fate they made for themselves. My brother bought an uninhabitable dump in the Melbourne hills. It's a mess and even more uninhabitable now than when he bought it. My brother in law made bad real estate investment decisions and is still paying a loan for a property he has not owned for more than 5 years. Not fate. They are living the consequences of their decisions.

 

My coincidence is a bit different to yours but I thought I would share it.

My wife's pop had passed away and we had the wake at a local club. This is around the time when the coca cola cans had names on the cans. I went up to the bar to buy about 10 cans of coke and they said to come back in 10mins because they just had to stick them in the fridge.

When I returned to buy the 10 cans of coke they all had pop as the name on the can. The whole case they put in the fridge had pop on them.

 

Fate

 

Poor Jeff. He deserves a helping hand after all those years as premier of Victoria

 

I don't believe in fate or karma but I do believe you reap what you sow.

 

I found a long-lost second cousin at work last week. I'd never met nor heard of him before, but he had an old surname of my family and I flat out asked his grandfathers name. Long story short, and after a whole series of increasingly detailed questions - his grandfather was my grandmother's brother. Allowed me to reunite two halves of the family. Was very cool!

 

Coincidence, fate or karma - call it what you will. Doing good deeds is always good.

I'm a helper. Dunno why, I just like helping people. A few weeks ago I was travelling down the freeway with the kids in the car and saw a car trying to get out of the middle lane. Some douche didn't want to let her in and she ended up putting on on hazard lights and he then started pacing her as she slowed down. Eventually she got so slow he gave up pacing and just went on and she got into the emergency lane. I was a couple of cars behind and stopped to see if she was ok - I thought she would just be upset by the douche behaviour of the guy that wouldn't let her change lanes. Well it turns out she had run out of petrol.
She was a young lady in her 20s and quite upset. I told her that there was a petrol station about 2km away and I could take her there to get some petrol. Long story, less long, she'd been released from hospital that day (still had her hospital bracelet on) after being assaulted. She didn't think to check the fuel levels and only had $10 on her. I paid for a jerry can and the petrol and told her to keep the jerry can in her boot and pay it forward one day when she finds someone who's run out of petrol.

It won't prevent bad things happening to me but helping others helps even out the balance sheet in my head some days.

 

Poor girl... thanks for doing that good deed @Westminster

 

Life is simply a series of extremely improbable events.
Fate doesn't exist - you can influence outcomes.

There was a series of extremely improbable events that led to meeting your spouse, getting a great job or deal. But your actions had an influence on that outcome.

This a worth reading - thank you @Steven Ryan. We (& other animals) are all excellent pattern matchers (Darwin had words to say about those who weren't), but we sometimes tend to see too many patterns and call them fate or ghosts or Gods Will. They aren't - it's just one of the billions of possible extremely improbable events happening to you right now, and our brains have been programmed to try to make sense of it, and form a pattern, and learn from it & continue to survive.

 

I don't know if I believe in 'fate'. It seems a bit much to say that things a predestined and choice makes no difference.

I do believe in oppertunities. That all of us are presented with infinite oppertunities all the time, and that it is our choices, our decisions that determines what we do with those oppertunities and the direction our life takes. And I think most of the time, most of us fail to even recognise these oppertunities for what they are until much further down the track.

 

To be honest, I can't believe people like @Westminster exist.
She is managing my duplex development.
Right now, I'm going through a bit of health drama. This was her message...
"I'll keep things ticking along here for you so don't worry about that."
After all, I'm no one to her! She isn't going to benefit much from me either.

 

Pffft you aren't no one @devank . I've met you, your lovely wife and kids. You and your family are your main priorities right now, I can handle the stuff over here.