The other day, I was having a conversation with a friend about whether or not fate exists. One of us insisted that whatever is meant to happen will happen, and there’s nothing that we can do to stop it; everything has a greater purpose in the end. The other couldn’t disagree more, believing that we’re in control, and as a result, things just happen sometimes without an underlying reason.
This conversation really got me thinking…
The Earth is 196.9 million square miles, and evidence shows that it’s over 4.5 billion years old. 107 billion people have lived, and 100 billion of those people are now dead.
When you pause to think about all that has happened to lead us to this exact place, it’s crazy.
Your ancestors had to meet at the right place and at the right moment and then have a child at precisely the right time. That child had to make millions of decisions to lead him or her to exactly the right place at the right time to meet another one of your ancestors. This process had to happen exactly the way that it did and continue to happen for 50,000 years (thousands of generations) just for you to come to be. That’s a lot of “rights” and a lot of “exactlies.”
The odds of that happening are so so small; they are so small that no computer can comprehend and neither can the human brain, meaning we literally can’t understand how crazy our existence is.
And that’s not even considering the odds of our ancestors existing. I mean, what are the odds of a single cell organism surviving on a spinning blue ball and evolving into a creature so complex? So complex that it can hypothesize the odds of its own existence….
Wild, right?
So, you’ve probably figured it out by now, but, yes, I am the one who believes in fate. I just don’t see any other way because the odds of all of this happening by chance are so unfathomably small.
When I think about all of my friends and family, I know that they were meant to be in my life; it’s so much more than sheer randomness. It’s fate. It’s “meant-to-be,” and I think that’s something worth believing in.
This conversation really got me thinking…
The Earth is 196.9 million square miles, and evidence shows that it’s over 4.5 billion years old. 107 billion people have lived, and 100 billion of those people are now dead.
When you pause to think about all that has happened to lead us to this exact place, it’s crazy.
Your ancestors had to meet at the right place and at the right moment and then have a child at precisely the right time. That child had to make millions of decisions to lead him or her to exactly the right place at the right time to meet another one of your ancestors. This process had to happen exactly the way that it did and continue to happen for 50,000 years (thousands of generations) just for you to come to be. That’s a lot of “rights” and a lot of “exactlies.”
The odds of that happening are so so small; they are so small that no computer can comprehend and neither can the human brain, meaning we literally can’t understand how crazy our existence is.
And that’s not even considering the odds of our ancestors existing. I mean, what are the odds of a single cell organism surviving on a spinning blue ball and evolving into a creature so complex? So complex that it can hypothesize the odds of its own existence….
Wild, right?
So, you’ve probably figured it out by now, but, yes, I am the one who believes in fate. I just don’t see any other way because the odds of all of this happening by chance are so unfathomably small.
When I think about all of my friends and family, I know that they were meant to be in my life; it’s so much more than sheer randomness. It’s fate. It’s “meant-to-be,” and I think that’s something worth believing in.
Do you believe in fate? Why or why not?
Wow! It really is incredible how slim the chances are that we are here today. I also believe in fate for many reasons, the main one being that without fate our purpose is slightly degraded. Because with purpose comes a plan... we are all put onto this Earth to do something, to make a contribution.
ReplyDeleteI feel like I have to believe in fate. The phrase "everything happens for a reason" has gotten me through every failure in life, whether it be major or just a little slip up. However, I have never thought about fate in terms of our entire existence, so it's really interesting that you brought that up. It's crazy to think that if I had sneezed one time in second grade, I may not be typing this comment. That may be a crazy scenario, but I think it further proves your point. Everything really does have to happen for a reason, so fate must exist.
ReplyDelete