Over the weekend, I watched a movie with my wife. I won’t say which movie because my guy friends will make fun of me. But in my defense, this past weekend included Valentine’s Day. Anyway, the movie talked a lot about fate and destiny and got me thinking about how much of what happens to us is within our control.
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According to Webster’s, fate is “a power that is believed to control what happens in the future; the things that will happen to a person or thing; the future that someone or something will have.”
Franklin Delano Roosevelt once said, “Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.” This leads me to conclude that our 32nd president didn’t really believe in fate but believed that each of us has the ability to achieve whatever we can imagine. But others who reached tremendous levels of success felt differently about fate than FDR. Napoleon Bonaparte said this about fate: “There is no such thing as accident; it is fate misnamed.” So which is it? Does fate exist, or is it something we’ve created to explain things that otherwise can’t be explained?
People of faith would say our fate or destiny is controlled by God. That is the “power” referred to in Webster’s. And I subscribe to this belief, but I also think there is more to it than just that. We, as individuals, control a lot of what happens to us each and every day—and to deny that can become a convenient excuse every time something doesn’t go our way. We can point to fate as the reason for everything bad that happens in our lives instead of taking responsibility for what we’ve done to cause it.
You don’t get the promotion you were hoping for. It’s fate, not that you weren’t as deserving as another. The project you lead turns out to be a failure. It’s fate, not that mistakes were made or the premise was flawed. We can’t continually take credit for everything good and right that happens to us but somehow abstain from all responsibility when things don’t go our way.
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I tend to lean closer to what FDR said than what Napoleon said. We first must believe in what is possible for us to achieve before it can happen. Good things don’t just happen; people put themselves in a position for good things to happen to them. Each of us has unique talents. Those talents, if employed properly, will allow us to be successful in life. But to do so requires something of us. We must put our talents to work in an area that will allow us to succeed. I’m sure we all can name some extremely talented people who weren’t successful. It could be that they were just plain lazy or that they didn’t understand what talents they possessed. Maybe they didn’t know what to do with their talents. Whatever the case, their talents were wasted.
But if we believe what Napoleon said, accidents aren’t something we caused because we were careless or moving too fast—accidents are just fate. I don’t buy it. When I rear-end the car in front of me on the interstate, that’s fate? It had nothing to do with the fact that I was driving too fast or following too close? How convenient! I’m no longer responsible for my actions because it was fate that caused me to run into that car.
Do I believe there is a power greater than me that causes or allows things to happen? Yes. But I also believe a great deal of what happens to us each day is a result of our own actions. And I believe we have the power to determine how to best use the talents we have to do the most good for others. We have enough control to be responsible for what we achieve in life. It’s not fate that determines what happens to us each day—it’s how we choose to act. Sure, there are things that are outside our control, but we should focus on things that are within it and do the most with them each and every day.