Layout by: Allysonkim Villanueva
Published by: Kristine Joyce Soriano
Date Published: February 06, 2025
Time Published: 5:18 PM
Category: Prose
Theme: Free will vs. fate: Do we truly control our destiny?
Life is an unpredictable dance between the choices we make and the circumstances we’re given. Sometimes, it feels like we have full control, steering ourselves toward a specific future. Other times, life takes unexpected turns, making us wonder if we ever had a say in the first place.
Take Maya, for example. She had been chasing her dream of becoming a musician for years, pouring her heart into every song. But after countless rejections, she started questioning if she was meant for this path. One night, feeling defeated, she picked up her guitar and played on a quiet street corner—no expectations, just pure passion. A stranger passing by stopped to listen. As fate would have it, he was a well-known music producer. That single, unplanned performance changed her life. Was it fate that placed her there at the perfect moment, or was it all the years of hard work leading up to that night that made the encounter inevitable?
Then there’s Elias, a man who planned his life down to the smallest details. He had a roadmap for his career, finances, and future. But life had other plans. A chance meeting with a stranger—someone he never intended to cross paths with—altered his direction entirely. That person became his greatest mentor, opening doors he hadn’t even considered. Did Elias truly shape his own destiny, or was something greater nudging him toward that meeting?
History is filled with figures whose lives straddled the line between free will and destiny. Consider Alexander Fleming, who accidentally discovered penicillin. Was it sheer luck that his petri dish developed mold in just the right way, or was he always meant to revolutionize medicine? If he hadn’t been a meticulous scientist capable of recognizing its significance, would that moment have been wasted?
Even our personal choices often reflect this duality. A person who moves to a new city for work might later realize they met their best friend or life partner as a result. Did their decision shape their fate, or was fate shaping them all along?
And what about those who narrowly escape tragedy? The person who misses a flight that later crashes, or the one who randomly decides to take a different route home and avoids disaster. Were those moments purely coincidental, or was there an unseen force guiding them?
Perhaps the real beauty of life is in the not knowing. Instead of choosing between free will and fate, maybe the secret is to embrace both. We make choices every day, but life also has its way of surprising us. Rather than fixating on who’s in control, maybe the most meaningful thing we can do is simply live the journey—one decision, one unexpected twist at a time.
IMAGE SOURCE: HernΓ‘ndez, A. (2023, December 28). I LOVE NATURE ❤. Pinterest. https://ph.pinterest.com/pin/976718237923983795/
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