Destiny- Bektur Totoshev

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Our unit in English just now had a big focus on fate and uncontrollable destiny and I just wanted to impart my take on it. In the Greek plays Oedipus the King and Antigone, fate is percieved as an unstoppable force and no matter what you do to defy it, it will eventually fulfill itself. I personally believe that destiny is not mapped out at all, and is rather the culmination of all decisions that affect you big and small, like what college you decided to attend, all the way to what kind of coffee you decided to buy on a particular day. Each choice you make can branch off into a million other choices you can make as a result of that one decision, sort of like a video game.
For large decisions such as a college, it's pretty self explanatory, what kind of college you attend will affect who your surrounded by, what your interests will shape to be and what your eventual career will become. For smaller decisions, a butterfly effect comes into play. What kind of coffee you get on a certain morning, may turn out to be the best tasting coffe you ever had, and you may buy it every day from that point on, which may lead to be unable to afford a birthday present by the price of a coffee, and that may lead to a falling out with a certain friend, which may cause you to become depressed and so on and so forth. But that's a lot of hypotheticals and what would probably happen instead is that you don't really notice any significant taste change in the coffee and continue on with your day.
An example I can give of small decisions changing my own future is the amount of homework I have to do before Christmas break. Constantly choosing to ignore my workload and promising myself 'I'll do it later' definitely didn't help, but I can trace it back further than that. Choosing the classes I wanted to take as a freshmen made me take the classes that gave me all this homework in the first place. But if I trace it back farther than that, the grades I got as a result of deciding to procrastinate in freshmen year influenced the classes I could choose in the first place. And even farther than that, I chose my classes for freshmen year in 8th grade and my 8th grade grades influenced that decision and etc. Each year also had millions of decisions each day that influenced what I wanted to do, whether it be study for my next test, or binge watch a new show. What I'm trying to say is that each decision is connected to each other, from the day your born, to the day you die, each choice will make an impact on your life.
I also decided to say in my first paragraph, 'decisions that affect you' and not 'your life decisions' because in many cases, the decisions of others will change will effect your own destiny. A prime example are your parents. The decisions parents make for you, can eventually mold you into what you will become in the future; how you act, your ideals, your interests, mannerisms, etc. What situation you are born into, whether it be good or bad is also the culmination of your parent's decisions. But overall, your decisions matter the most and while others can influence it, when all is said and done it is you that makes your decisions. Life is really what you make of it.Image result for branching decision tree

Comments

  1. AnonymousDecember 12, 2019 at 6:01 AM

    This is a really interesting take on fate! It contrasts very well with the preordination and predestiny that we've been seeing with Antigone

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousDecember 15, 2019 at 5:57 PM

    I liked reading your perspective on this topic. Makes me think of a fact I saw somewhere that says we make 35,000 decisions each day - that's a lot of chances for fate to change!

    ReplyDelete
  3. DanielleDecember 17, 2019 at 9:44 AM

    An interesting perspective and I like the example you gave about wanting to buy coffee, etc. It's wild to think how much one decision can change the course of our lives. Especially something like where you go to school or a job you take - those decisions may lead to spouses or moving, etc. I think we all have many paths we could end up on!

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