Fate. Does it exist? Are we all subject to a definitive plan procured by a concealed entity? Or is blind chance the nature of reality?

I’ve thought a lot about this lately. Like a lot. I think the answer to this question probably changes a million times in a person’s life. Circumstances are mostly responsible for the uncertainty of someone’s feelings about fate.

I know I have been on both sides of the argument in just the past month. My rational “scientific” mind dismisses fate with ease. I can easily argue that the idea of fate is simply a psychological construct produced by humans to help explain and cope with the randomness of reality.

On the other hand, my emotional soul insists fate is a law of life. When I experience the unexplainable, and seemingly providential aspects of life, even my rational mind becomes intrigued and persuaded.

Now as I’m sure you could have predicted—I have no true answer. But that does not keep me from having an opinion.

Last Saturday I woke up and went for a run on the golf course near my then, livable, apartment. The night before had been unusually cool for a beach city like Wilmington, and this morning was no different. As I was running myself numb, the sun started to come up over the hills of the golf course. I could see those intimate shades of reds and oranges— that only the sun can produce—pierce through the dispersing fog beyond me.

I was seized by a thought.

I imagined each individual ray of light as it traveled into my presence. I thought about the distance those photons had traveled. The speed at which they had moved. The preciseness of where they landed and scattered in order for my eyes to perceive them. Now I would assume that I do not have to explain the fact that those beams of photons did not get to choose whey they would land and illuminate. Their dispersal was completely random, but in this randomness a certainty exists.

When I got back to my apartment from the run I went to eat breakfast with my parents who were in town visiting. As we sat at our usual breakfast spot talking, we discussed my “future”. As they encouraged me to enjoy my youth and not to worry so much about what I was going to “be”, I could’t help but think about the sunlight I had viewed that morning.

I too was speeding through the universe on a seemingly random path. The problem was that I didn’t have the sense of purpose that the sun beams seemed to, I had no idea what I was going to do when I finally reached my destination.

We finished eating and headed back to the apartment.

Now there are a few things you don’t want to see when you arrive at your place of residence. On that list fire truck would be in the top 5.

There were a lot of fire trucks…

Apparently the pipes connected to the fire alarm sprinklers in my apartment had frozen the night before and busted. Alarms were blaring, and water was pouring into my apartment. Bad, right?

Yup.

We spent the following hours moving furniture, clothes, and most importantly food into what will be my knew place for a while.

My parents had just purchased flood insurance a couple days earlier, another condo that they owned in town was vacant, and they happened to be in town to help me out with everything.

When I got settled in to my knew place I ran back through the thoughts I had at breakfast that morning. As I mentioned, I felt like sunbeams had a known purpose, and I wanted the same thing.

But sunbeams don’t have known purposes do they?

Sunbeams are used for a collection of purposes. Energy production, light, physical nourishment, and just plain life. Sunbeams will ultimately be used for something here on earth, but ultimately that will be decided by where they land and what happens to be there.

And there is where the certainty exists.

I realize the direction I travel is very similar to the sunbeams. The journey begins somewhat randomly and is diverted and directed by many outside forces that can not be predicted. When it finally reaches it’s earthly destination it is given to the fate of its location, and fulfills a purpose. But it doesn’t stop there.

Energy cannot be created or destroyed right? So that sun beam becomes transformed into a new form, and rejoins it’s random journey until it meets another fateful destination.

We can’t know where we are going, but we can know that when we arrive we will have a purpose. And that is a certainty I can live with.

So fate?

Yea, I sorta believe in it…