The concept of “fate” has been around for a long time; it weaves its way into our most treasured stories and answers the questions most of us could spend our entire lives trying to solve. We are constantly fascinated by it — this higher power that mere humans will always struggle to comprehend, but also a comfort we wouldn’t be able to find otherwise. Even in the face of some unfortunate circumstance, it’s much easier to chalk it up to something unexplainable than to try and lay the blame anywhere else.

Of course, fate applies to happier things, too. Sometimes it’s nice to say that what happened was always meant to be: that unexpectedly free coffee in the morning to kick start your day, or that promotion that hits you when you hadn’t even been reaching for it. Or that out of the hundreds of trainees hoping to make it big in an industry all too infamous for making its own products feel so, so small, just nine girls were able to claw their way to the very top.

The visual is not picture perfect: the grueling hours of practice wearing you down past the bone, laughing and crying with girls just like you when deep down you know you’d want yourself to make the cut over anyone else, any day. And just when you think you’ve made it, that you’ve finally grasped the chance to show the entire world what you have to offer, it hits you: the eyes and expectations of thousands upon thousands of people, waiting for the simplest slip-up, the slightest misstep, to dump you in an ocean so pitch black, no light could possibly shine from it again.

And yet, they did make it. Girls’ Generation lived up to their name in more ways than one, defining an entire era in the K-Pop timeline. Their journey was slow but not steady, riddled with pitfalls of doubt and long trenches of treacherous scrutiny from everyone, including themselves. But in the end, they were able to climb out on the other side and continue forward, stronger because of their struggles, and successful because of their sincerity, perseverance, and perhaps something even greater.

The thing with fate is that it often works in mysterious ways. So it can push a group of people along the same path for years and years, and then one by one, start to tug them down different directions at every fork in the road. Some go into acting, and others design — there are solo concerts and charity campaigns and DJ gigs, after all, and it’s impossible to explore every single branch together and still have enough time to discover everything they’re capable of.

Yet even as their paths diverge and feet wander, one thing remains true: the thread that has united them since before the beginning, and will remain until forever ends. It’s thin, barely visible even when you look for it, but strong, nevertheless. It stretches as some travel farther and farther — across nations, across oceans — but a simple tug will bring those paths meandering back; and if there isn’t a way yet, any member of Girls’ Generation is more than capable of forging her own, by now.

Those of us that are more pragmatic might call fate silly, something to be entertained but not invested in. And that is a fair point: why get caught up in something fantastical when the world as we know it operates on logic and reason? But maybe, at the end of the day, we see what we want to see in these individuals who made themselves a special space in each one of our hearts; it’s something real, profound, and even a little bit like magic.

Congratulations on twelve years, Girls’ Generation. It’s a long time, of course, but we know that you have a lot longer to go before you part ways. So here’s to a happy anniversary, and the incredible destiny that still awaits you.

Sources: Tiffany’s Twitter, Heavenly Forest, Yoona China, wkorea@Instagram.com, Tiffany’s Instagram

Written by: moonrise31@soshified