Free Will or Destiny

Is every event and occurrence of our lives predestined or do we have a role in shaping our destinies? The debate between fatalism and free will is perhaps as old as philosophy itself.

Human beings are different from other living creatures due to the possession of mind and intellect which makes them capable of the process of thought and decision-making. If the thought processes of this mind and the decisions made by it were of no significance, its presence in the first place would become redundant and questionable. On the contrary, if mind, intellect and free will were to reign supreme, then the law of causality would hold good in each and every situation and there would not be any unexplained phenomenon. But as is evident, that is not the case. Each one of us, irrespective of our beliefs and notions, has observed or experienced some role of some external force affecting the outcome of our efforts. Whether one chooses to call it nature, fate, luck, God or whatever other name, its existence cannot be denied.

Man has come a long way in his quest for knowledge about the unknown. Our intellect and reason constantly push us to test the limits of what we know and expand our knowledge of the unknown. With the advancement in various fields, the realm of the explained and known keeps on increasing and that of the unknown and unrevealed goes on diminishing. This is a continuous process, a journey whose destination is not yet in man’s sight, because the road to be travelled is unimaginably long. The more we seem to know and understand, the more enigmatic the journey becomes. A single answer gives birth to multiple new questions.

A day might dawn when man gets the answers to all his questions, when every cause has a directly proportional effect, when reason reigns supreme and when every occurrence has a well-established and valid explanation. That day we might also be able to solve the riddles of fate, chance, luck and God. The boundaries or boundlessness of our free will may become crystal clear to us. But till that day, we can just move ahead, giving our best in each and every situation that confronts us, leaving the Universe to decide the consequence of our actions.