Do you believe in fate?

[Sunny4876]

Do you believe you meet certain people for a reason,things happen for a reason,you dream or fantasize about things and then they become reality.Or you're thinking about someone more than usual and they pop up? Is deja vu the same?

Not necessarily fate per se, but I do believe in ‘sliding doors’ moments - that subtle events can make a difference to what comes in the future.

I have also had dreams that have several months later come true. Unfortunately they’re of the not so nice variety so it’s not something I really enjoy. But I know that it’s real because I told my mum about each dream when it happened, so it wasn’t just something that I think I dreamt after a traumatic event.

Not at all. How does it operate for people who suffer painful conditions, devastatingly poor mental health, live in poverty, are homeless, or live through otherwise unpleasant and life-ruining situations and circumstances? Why can fate intervene to ensure someone gets the right job, or meets the right partner, but not intervene to stop a child drowning in the sea while with his family trying to make a better life, or being abused, or being trafficked, or enslaved, or any of the million other horrific things people endure?

I think we get one life, and our chances of success and happiness are a complicated mix of many elements, including chance. Too many abhorrent shitty things happen for me to believe otherwise.

Very good points about pain and suffering,it is horrible to think that was fated for someone.I've had lots of instances where I've asked the universe for things(as in,dreamt)and have gotten them,but always with a double edged sword so not all good outcomes.
But I can't shake the feeling that I'm intrinsically linked to certain people for a specific reason and have a lesson to learn and they'll keep reappearing until I do.

@AgeLikeWine

No.

‘Fate’ is a form of confirmation bias. Most people struggle with concepts of probability and randomness so they invest stories to explain what they are unable to understand.

Yes, exactly. See also the remarkably self-deluding threads on the ‘law of attraction’.

I don't believe that our futures are predestined by a force or person. But I do believe that circumstances and context combine to create 'forces' that make certain choices extremely difficult or impossible.

For example, being born into an abusive family of drug addicts makes it extremely difficult to become prime minister and makes it likely you'll have a humdrum life that's more likely to involve more addiction and abuse. In that sense is it your fate not to become prime minister? There are certainly forces keeping you down but they're not mystical, they're societal.

Repeat that principle with every aspect of our lives, big and small, and that's how I believe 'fate' works. It's an unfathomably complex interaction of millions of our choices and accidental circumstances. We have power to the extent that we can make choices, but the ability to make those choices is also limited by accidents of birth, personality, health, etc.

I'm a very pragmatic and practical type, so I definitely don't believe in any sort of pre-determined stuff. That goes beyond my understanding.
That said, when I was in 4th year at high school, we had a "new boy" come up from England. The second I saw him, I said to my pal "oh, he's gorgeous, I'm going to marry him!". Life got in the way a little but, as it turned out, our paths crossed again at the age of 31 - and I did bloody marry him!

That said, I've had more than my fair share of crap in life, so I'm not really comfortable with the idea of things happening for a reason.
I guess I was just lucky to cross paths again with my 16 year old crush!

I love to believe in fate. Mainly because the thought that any tiny decision I make can have a huge impact on the path my life takes, or that what happens to me is entirely dependent on randomness and chaos, is terrifying to me. It’s far more comforting when things go badly to be able to sit back and think “ah well, something better must be coming along, it wasn’t meant to be” etc. than to believe my life is left completely to chance and I have no control over it/there is no path mapped out for me.

I mean the logical part of me says that fate is all bollocks, but I don’t listen to her.

It is probably easier to believe in fate when you’ve been lucky in life. I generally consider myself quite lucky, and (so far!) when the shit has hit the fan it’s all worked out ok on the end. Had I been dealt a worse hand then the idea that that was my fate would not be welcome at all.

I do think, in my own life, that whatever happens I’ll be ok. It’s more optimism I guess but my experiences have been that however bad things get, something always comes along to make it all better.

Me too! Which makes it easier to believe in fate.