Do you have to live what you’re going to live? Or can you decide what your future is going to be? If you truly have the power to control your destiny, you should control what’s happening. If you can’t influence destiny, you should stop trying to control things.
Have you had experiences where you were truly in control? Or could it be that all those experiences couldn’t have happened in any other way? What exactly can you control when countless different variables must come together for something to happen, when one little change in one of these variables is enough to change the outcome? Can you even know how many variables and conditions there are?
What you call “me” or “my decisions” is just countless conditions. You can’t even guess how many there are. A small change in your body’s hormones, a single bad experience, or a single good one will change your direction and take you to a different destination.
What you call “me” is nothing more than the manifestation of countless conditions that have come together. You’re the impulse-response function of numerous conditions that are separate yet related. You drift toward the shore like an ocean wave being subjected to the wind, tide, currents, and other conditions. You consider yourself to be free from these conditions and believe you can set your own direction and magnitude. You think you can determine the impact you will make on the rocks, even though you don’t know the size or shape of these rocks. You take it for granted that you will arrive at these rocks, free from the conditions you’re unaware of and will always be ignorant of.
You’re an apple that grows subject to the weather, insects, and birds and at the mercy of storms. Even so, you think you can decide when to ripen, what your flavor will be, and whether you’ll be used for jam, juice, vinegar, or a delicious dessert with cinnamon flakes.
To consider yourself more free and in control than an apple or ocean wave is really what compels you. Yet you’re no different from these things, because you also depend on numerous conditions to exist. You suppose you’re here to mold destiny as you desire and decide what you will experience in your future. However, you’re merely here to observe and understand why things happen in a certain way, not because you need to control them and make choices. You’re not a controller but rather an observer.
The future is not a blank page waiting to be written. All the choices have already been made. Your part in it all is to understand why these choices are made in a certain way. If you can manage to understand this, your future may become a blank page. Destiny is the only way to attain free will.
