David Scott IB English IV

9/22/04 Period 3

Fate

At the present time, I do not know exactly what to make of fate, but I do not believe that our lives are entirely predetermined. Of course, there are some certainties: everyone is destined to age and to die at some point, everyone is destined to suffer hardship of some degree, and Hillary Duff is, apparently, destined to be successful in the fields of acting and singing despite an utter lack of talent in the areas of acting and singing. However, for the most part, I am of the opinion that the actions of people and the forces of the world around them are what shape the events of people’s lives. Nobody is ever in full control of how their lives will turn out because other people and forces also affect their lives, but I do not believe that what will happen is written in stone.

I somehow thought that more profound ideas and beliefs of mine would come flowing out onto this paper, as I have given quite a bit of thought to the concept of fate. For many years now, I have been laying out the plot of a novel that I intend to write someday. Within the world of this high fantasy novel, fate will play a principal role. The basic plan right now is that fate is a force that affects almost everyone in the world. Those affected by fate are known as the Destined. However, there are a few people, the Fateless, who, as their name suggests, are outside of fate’s sphere of control. Furthermore, their actions can affect the lives of the Destined, invoking great changes in the ways that their lives turn out. The majority of the Fateless are born outside of destiny, but a few are able to attain such status through their own actions. After reading over that last sentence, even I, possibly like you, raised an eyebrow: if one’s life is controlled by fate, how can one leave fate’s influence? It could be that fate “exists,” but it is merely an illusion, and that it only affects people’s lives because the Destined so strongly believe that it will. Perhaps those who can become removed from fate’s power, ironically, need to be destined to break free of fate’s restraints by fate itself. It could stand to reason that one of the Fateless might have to alter the life of a Destined to an incredible degree to make them become a Fateless. Or, quite possibly, I simply haven’t given as much though to this matter as is needed. However, the third option seems most probable to me, and it relates to one of my views of the real world. For this example, I will consider the Fateless as people in today’s society who are gifted, either intellectually or in some other way, and who will likely accomplish a great deal, and the Destined as society’s ordinary people of average means who are unlikely to move far beyond their starting station in life. The Fateless would be the movers and shakers of society, making great differences that may affect humanity for years to come, while the Destined will likely lead their lives without doing anything that society deems worth remembering and that are very predictable. However, suppose a Fateless speaks at, say, some sort of a school rally and, with his or her incredibly motivating speech, a number of Destined are convinced to change their lives around, so that, someday, those Destined become Fateless themselves. Thus, in today’s context, the Fateless would be the ones who, while not destined for greatness, possess the potential for a greatness that may change the world. I get the feeling that I could have done a better job of explaining that belief, but I think the gist of it is clear.

An entirely different, yet still interesting facet of destiny appears when one considers the question: can one use time travel to change one’s fate? As I see it, there are two main theories. The first is that history and destiny will not allow themselves to change or will involve you in keeping them the same. That is, if you go back in time to try to stop something from happening (like that movie, the name of which escapes me, in which a man travels back in time and tries to kill Hitler before WW II could begin), you are likely to either have no effect at all (by failing miserably and/or dying) or, in fact, to indirectly cause the event to happen (for instance, in an episode of Futurama, Fry goes back in time, tries to save his “grandfather” and accidentally winds up killing him, then… umm… becomes his own biological grandfather). The second theory is basically the Back to the Future movies’ theory of time travel (which prevents the creation of a paradox!) in which, at each second, there is a potential for a number of events to take place that will then shape the possible events for an unlimited number of timelines that extend beyond that second and into the next. If, through time travel, a person goes from the present to the past and changes one of those events, then the timeline will change, causing the ‘present’ to differ from what the time traveler remembered. I favor the latter of these two theories because it just seems to make more sense than a number of coincidences just happening to arise at just the right moments to make everything work out for history and destiny.

All things considered, I believe that the concept of fate should be quite depressing, to one who accepts it and thinks about it for long enough. It basically says that nobody has any free will. That nothing we do is really done by our choice, no matter how much we tell ourselves it is. That the world in which we live isn’t as different from an existentialist world as we might think. However, perhaps this is simply the wrong way of looking at it. The people who believed in Norse mythology accepted that Ragnorak was fated to happen, but, instead of feeling sorrowful and thinking that all they could ever do would be for naught, they opted to make the most of what little time they did have by leading their lives to the fullest. That may just be the most rational way of thinking about fate.

However, now, right at this moment, I believe I have truly realized something else that I think about destiny in the real world. My views are, more-or-less, summed up in the following quote of Magus from the Super Nintendo game, Chrono Trigger (as a little background, Magus was, as a child, hurled forward many centuries through time by an event that destroyed his home. As a fully-grown man, he finds a way to return to his original era – mere days before the catastrophe is about to happen. He goes to prevent its occurrence, but pauses just outside of the door and has a brief debate with himself, finally committing his resolve with the subsequent words) : “If history is to change, let it change! If the world is to be destroyed, so be it! … If my fate is to be destroyed… I must simply laugh!” Even if fate does exist and it’s decided to rule against him, he doesn’t care! He’s going to do what he intended to do, even though he’s already seen the event play out firsthand and knows how it has to end. If fate does exist, there isn’t a thing that anyone can do about it, so what’s the harm in forcing it to take everyone as they fight it to the last? As the song says, “que sera, sera: whatever will be, will be.” Whether it comes about as a result of fate or as a result of our individual actions matters little. However, how we act toward fate should make a great deal of difference. One who tries to oppose his destiny appears very valiant and courageous (after all, what battle requires more courage to enter than one that is already lost?), as we all favor the underdog to an extent and one who fights against his own destiny is (if you’ll forgive this bit of profanity…) a hell of an underdog. On the opposite side, one who decides that fate cannot be surmounted and who quietly acquiesces to his destiny can be considered a quitter who is simply too afraid to try to exercise his free will. Thus, even though it may mean absolutely nothing in the long run, all people should simply struggle to do what seems to be the best course of action at the time, entirely disregarding fate. Only then can one be considered in control of one’s destiny.