The Yellow Brick Road
I see life as a series of paths before me. Like branches of a tree they stretch out in random directions, each with it’s own branch children and grandchildren.
The path I take becomes my life, my collection of experiences. Each path leads me to a difference set of branches, from which comes another set of random branches.
These branches are the choices in my life. Just as I am faced with hundreds of choices each day, I am standing on a path with hundreds of branches.
During a conversation on fate and destiny, a friend expressed the viewpoint that fate is the string of branches that have been predetermined for any given person—a Yellow Brick Road, so to speak. Destiny would then be the final destination at the very end of the Yellow Brick Road.
With that definition, I’d say I don’t believe in fate and destiny. I don’t believe that there is a predetermined set of paths that one takes.
In my opinion, each person makes his own road. As the person comes across each branch, that person alone decides which branch to take. Everyone controls his own fate and destiny.
I see this Yellow Brick Road theory as a romantic but limiting one. To believe that I have been preordained to do whatever I am doing at this very moment (to believe that you were fated to be reading this) is, in my opinion, a leap of faith for reasons of fear and want of reassurance.
To know that what a person’s actions have already been determined provides a sense of validation to his everyday actions. If he controlled his own fate, then he would be directly responsible for each and every one of his actions.
So I can see why it’s comforting to believe in the Yellow Brick Road theory. That person can make a grand mistake, and he is not directly responsible for it.
If that person is content with what he’s currently doing, then he’s less apt to change it—he’ll believe that that is what he’s been fated to do. There’s no true incentive to go the extra level and make himself even more content.
If one does not believe in fate, however, then he may take that extra risk with the realization that he’s the master of his own fate and destiny. The only way to truly be happy and successful would be to make himself happy and successful, not to sit back and wait until fate brings him there.
For me, it comes down to: If I was standing on a path with hundred branches, I’d rather see a field of paths ahead of me than one Yellow Brick Road that I have to take without question or choice.
Do you believe in fate?
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