Do you believe in fate and if so why?

[justaskingreally]

Just wondering

I find it hard to make decisions and sometimes take comfort that even though I make a decision I am influenced in some way by events into making that decision

I believe in fate and I wonder if life is mapped out for you to some extent..

I also think you can make your own luck and that positive things can happen if you try hard enough but I do think there is an overall grand plan and you have limited control within that plan

What do you think?

I like to think our life is mapped out for us insomuch as its like a tree - lots of branches, lots of twigs where we make choices and take different directions but ultimately ending up in roughly the same place

I like the way you put that. I'm sort of similar. I see life as similar to one of those books where you can choose your next step and turn to that page. The book is already written, but you can choose your path within it.

I agree - apologies for long story
When we were around 10 DH (who obviously I didn’t know then ) moved to The UK and his Mum bought a post office. She struggled to choose between 2 but eventually did. The one she didn’t choose was in my home village
When we were both 16 (still hadn’t met) we both went on School trips to a country that it was quite unusual to visit and VERY unusual for schools to visit but there were unusual circumstances that meant both our schools did ( different unusual circumstances) . We were both there at the same time but didn’t meet
We ended up at the same uni but in different colleges and on different courses so probably wouldn’t have met if the girl who lived in the room next to me didn’t end up gong out with his friend. By the time I finally met DH we were both in relationships so were just friends.
2 years after leaving uni I was working and living in a hotel 3 hours away from home and a mutual acquaintance said “did you know that x(DH) lives near there now?
His family had moved close to where I was working and DH happened to be living there too after taking a year to go travelling after we had all left Uni. I didn’t know how to contact him but then a postcard arrived at my Mums house for me from DH when he had been travelling but it had been delayed. His number was on it
I called him, he came round to the hotel and when he got it of the car (I hadn’t seen him for a couple of years) I was smitten for some reason, which I never had been before. Luckily it was mutual
We’ve been married almost 20 years now
Fate kept trying to get us together and eventually it worked

No, fate is bullshit.

My son lived for 3 short months.

My daughter lived for 2 weeks in a great deal of pain.

Why would that be mapped out for them?

Fate is used to comfort people, it's really just coincidences, or making the best of what you have. There is no higher plan or any such nonsense.

Not at all. I see life as an ever-branching path, but not one that is pre-laid or pre-determined. Sometimes you follow an existing path, sometimes you forget a new path, sometimes you can only get to where the path is because you built a bridge. Sometimes you can walk paths you walked before, or go back to paths you didn't walk, but you can't restart the journey as a whole.

When I find decisions difficult I take comfort in the fact that all paths lead to opportunities and decisions I could never have foreseen. You can only look a little way ahead, but you can look a long way back.

But the idea that there is an overall grand plan is just nonsense to me.

Yes I do! Me and my husband met on a night out. He flipped a coin on whether or not to go to the bar that I was in with friends. That coin flip caused us to meet and the rest is history!

Yes I do! Me and my husband met on a night out. He flipped a coin on whether or not to go to the bar that I was in with friends. That coin flip caused us to meet and the rest is history!

That sounds to me like the perfect example of how everything is random!

If you hadn't met him then you would have met someone else and married them instead and put that meeting down to fate too.

No such thing as fate.

No, I don't believe in fate.

Sometimes I think daft thoughts how dh and I must have been 'meant to be' as you'd never have expected us to end up together given our early lives... but I know it's just chance that we did. It's not all written and planned out. It's random happenings that we feel a need to give meaning to.

Breakyourselfagainstmystones I am so sorry for what you have been through

Breakyourselfagainstmystones

That's heartbreaking, so sorry for your losses - it puts everything else in lfe into perspective.

breakyourself I'm sending you so much love, what you've been through is beyond horrific. I hope you're managing to do ok. I lost my first son in birth but am extremely lucky to have my little boy now even his Dad did dump me /us afterwards. Are you able to try again? Tight hug

Break, I'm so sorry.

No, I don't believe in fate at all, and I agree with a pp who said that most of the anecdotes invoked to support the idea of fate on this thread are either more about randomness or just show the human liking for patterns in random events, because they're comforting.

I do believe to a degre. It certainly feels like fate sometimes.

Degree I mean

I believe stuff happens and then you try and get on with it. No grand plan.