DESTINY

We all have, at some point in our life wondered about our destiny. Many of us believe that what we were in the past or what we are right now or what we will be in the future is already written or pre-decided by God and it is a part of His grand design. Every religion promotes it and many a times we may have been advised by our elders to never doubt it. But we do have to ask ourself whether it is correct, we have to be skeptical about it, for someone with a mind having the perception of someone else controlling their life can lead to adverse effects on their lives.

To understand how did the concept of destiny entered in our life, we have to speculate based on what we know about our past. Anthropologists and historians have studied the life styles of humans before and during our dawn of civilization. They found that even before humans settled near rivers, they moved as a group in which a leader or a chief was responsible for the members of that group.  Upon his death, certain rites were followed with the hope that he would look after them even after death. As time passed humans took comfort in believing  that a far more powerful being than them was watching over them and they offered him sacrifices in order to continue receiving his blessings and protect them from natural calamities. Funny how some things never change. Nevertheless people at that time were not aware of the causes of natural phenomenons like rain, storms, earthquakes, tsunamis etc. and so we should not blame them for what they did. But what is more depressing is that we still see people sacrificing animals or perfoming strange rites to please Gods and Goddesses whenever they have to go through a rough patch in their life.

For a moment let us consider that everything we have known about destiny is real. So it implies that God controls all of our fates. Now try to explain that to a 15 year old girl that has been raped or to the parents of a 5 year old who died in an accident or try telling that to the relatives of those who didnot survive the recent Nepal earthquake. What kind of God would decide these fates for his devotees! What kind of God would decide for a new born baby to be abandoned!. If that is so, then what does it say about us , worshipping a God like that ?

It is a scientific fact that the possibilities in our future in infinite. But out of those infinite possibilities we experience only one at a given time. We experience time in a direction from past to future. The past has occured and is fixed. However the future is not so. Think about it. In the next one minute, you can do a lot of things. for example you may go to bathroom, you may close your eyes and think , you can switch to youtube..etc. but among all these, at a particular time you can decide only one action and the consequences of that action will follow. Every event can lead to infinite consequences and again out of those consequences each one will have separate infinite consequences. But most importantly, who made the initial choice? You did. Not God. You. Whatever follows is because you chose to do a particular set of events and not because it was pre-written by God. Consider this for all the people around the globe. Everyone is making their own choices and it is leading them to a particular outcome. No one is controlling them.  

Another area where destiny plays a major role is Astrology. Astrology claims to provide ways to change our destiny.  Somehow astrologers and priests have convinced people that they have to wear certain stones and talismans in order to be successful in their lives and somehow the stones will eliminate the negative energy surrounding them and they would also be free from wrath of those Gods whom they may have unknowingly offended. It seems that higher the amount you spend , faster and more effective would be the outcome. I mean, com'on people, you sure can see past that . They exploit a very basic emotion of human nature- fear of the unknown. The main disadvantage here is that we lose our self-confidence and we become more dependent on our talismans. Also whenever we fail at something, instead of trying harder next time, we blame everything on our fate. That attitude really hampers our progress in life.

We can witness how this concept of destiny affects our life. Some of us convince ourselves that we suffer because it is our fate,  marriage failing and miscarriages happen because the gods were not pleased. Some of us are too afraid to go against our traditional views because of  which we may end up in hell. For those people I would like them to think about how come they would feel pain after death as for experiencing pain , pain centres in the brain have to be active which won't be after they are buried or cremated. There is no heaven and hell. Everything is here. The concept was just created to put the fear of God in humans to maintain order, which is a good thing, but now such concepts are misused to make suicide bombers and justifying terrorist attacks. We dont need to follow a good thing by believing in a false cause. Just enjoy the present. thats why its called 'The Present'.

Does this means that God doesn't exist? Its still open to debate. But from the teachings of great teachees ,leaders and philosophers we have learned that only thing we should focus on is that there is good within humans and we should  not base our actions thinking about the pleasures of heavens and tortures of hell. If the punishments in hell is what encouraging people to be good, then there is little hope for those people.

Personally , I agree in what Laplace said " I have no need for that hypothesis. He may be around though."