I don’t want to believe in fate

I’ve been thinking about this for 4 weeks

Hey, stranger.

I’ve been curling up like a dog in front of the fireplace this winter. I’ve been drinking a lot of coffee and not a lot of water. I’ve been complaining about my dry skin and not even attempting to moisturize my legs. I’ve been eating peanut butter on sweet potatoes. I’ve been wearing clothes I love and considering dying my hair dark brown. I’ve been happy.

There is a curious phenomenon that happens when I’m happy, unbothered, and feeling calm. My brain likes to start tackling philosophical problems that have no answer that is helpful in any way, shape, or form. It’s a need to solve something whenever everything else is still.

This winter I’ve been trying to determine whether or not I believe in fate.

I’ve admittedly lost track of where I stand on this, due to some combination of political events rendering philosophical thought practically useless, work deadlines, and general avoidance to giving a wrong answer. It’s not like me to avoid eye contact with a position on something. In fact, whenever I walk past storefronts it’s become a habit to form a judgement on everything I see. Yeah, I’d wear that. Oh, that’s cute. I wouldn’t be caught dead in that. Call it a force of habit or a compulsion— forcing myself to develop an opinion on everything is my way of establishing personal taste. Evaluating my preferences, no matter how small, takes me one step closer to knowing myself. So why have I been unable to make my mind up about fate?

I think, reader, that much of my inner turmoil stems from my conflicted feelings about kismet, destiny—whatever you want to call it. I felt fated to pursue something in the humanities, so I became an engineer—what I once saw as the antithesis. Yet I felt fated to have a New York chapter, so I’m moving in March. Resisting what feels preordained has, at times, led me to wonderful things. So has surrendering to it. It seems that resistance itself might be part of the plan.

But does that mean I believe in fate?

I don’t think I want to. Anything that threatens my sense of control feels inherently villainous. I do not want to be playing a part written for me, no matter how great the story. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s finding narrative in everything, big or small. I do this constantly, even in the mundane: at the grocery store, on the way to an event, when deciding what to wear. At work, I’m an eccentric genius optimizing an algorithm. When hosting a dinner party, I’m a gregarious but absentminded socialite burning the chicken parmesan.

Maybe I’m just imaginative.

But I think it’s more than that. I’m sure everyone else has a story they concoct of their world around them— one that helps them feel good about themselves or makes sense of the world when there’s very little sense to be found. The freedom to choose our own—even if it’s delusion—is what I’d rather believe in. The idea of fate tastes bitter, like we’re all on a train bound for a destination we never agreed to. I refuse to believe that’s true.

Beyond my own need for control, the idea that every one of us has our own story we live in makes understanding people so much easier. It’s an awareness that I’ve had since I was little, maybe brought on by an obsession for reading. Other people’s actions or motivations are so much easier to comprehend when you try to reconstruct the story from their point of view. I can easily see when I may be a villain in someone else’s story, if they’re center stage. Maybe what I’m describing is just empathy, but I think it’s deeper than that. I don’t believe it’s fate that pushes us along our paths, it’s the choice of character or story that we decide on at a young age. Our reality bends around our perception. I may have thought it was a resistance to destiny that I chose to turn away from the arts, but really it was a manifestation of the character I’d like to be, one who takes the harder path to see what all the fuss is about. In the end, it always has been in my control.

My decision, it seems, is that I don’t want to believe in fate. I choose to believe in our ability to steer the ship. Taking accountability for the path you’ve found yourself on is certainly harder than blaming it on a preordained course, but I think it’s worth it. After all, fate is just another story. And I’d rather write my own.

xoxo,

Evie