Destiny: its meaning and its relation to chance

Talking about destiny can be common in a conversation, in which the word jumps naturally about the events that have occurred in our life and those that have not occurred; for example, we advise our friends with phrases such as "I was not at your destination."

The truth is that, when we say these phrases and involve the destination, we are affirming that we believe that there is a map with a point of arrival that we will find no matter what path we take. This and much more we can learn about destiny, but first of all, do you believe in fate?

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The meaning of destiny

Power eExplaining what destiny is is not an easy task. We must begin by accepting that all people have a belief system that makes us see and we accept what destiny is in one way or another, so it is necessary that we be with our mind open.

And how not to be if it has happened to all of us at some time in our lives that, a decision, or being in a specific place at the time indicated, they lead us to a series of events that we could neither explain nor assure that they would have happened anyway if they had done otherwise. shape.

Some might say that it is mere chance. But in the opposite case, when we take all possible ways to avoid "something" and yet we always end up facing that "something", then will it be our destiny?

The RAE defines destination as ‘unknown force’, ‘chain of events considered necessary and fatal’, ‘goal, point of arrival’. This definition gives us some starting point criteria for a broader definition: fate is a force that we do not know, much bigger than us that acts on the lives of all people and takes us through a succession of events that are unavoidable for us.

It also depends on your beliefs. From some religions, destiny is considered a plan of God or divine providence; in others, it has to do with predestination and karma. These are just a few examples to explain that, even without knowing for sure that unknown force that we call destiny, it has always been present in one way or another in the beliefs with which we guide our lives.

Fate, chance or causality

But another fairly common question arises when we talk about situations from which we cannot escape: is it fate, or is it just chance?

Chance is defined as a casual event in which two unforeseen events or circumstances coincide due to a strange force that we do not know and that is chance. A definition quite similar to that of destiny since chance is nothing more than another system of thought and therefore of beliefs that, In the end, they seek the same thing as those who believe in destiny: to give an answer to those unexpected events that we cannot otherwise. to reason.

The difference between fate and chance is that, when we speak of destiny, we believe that our history and the events in it are written in some place that we do not know from the moment we arrived in the world; for its part, chance credits him with those unexpected events by which we pass to plays of chance.

Now, to this equation about the unexpected events in our lives we can add another component, causality. Causation is another thought system in which all life events pass through cause and effect, that is, everything that happens in our life is due to decisions and previous actions that we have taken, so that causality gives us entirely the responsibility of everything that happens to us.

It is up to each of us to choose which line of thought we follow to face our life. Those who are more rational decide by causality while others prefer give a little more magic and lightness to life by believing in destiny; others stay somewhere in between believing in chance. How correct any of these concepts is depends on the interpretation of each one.