A Whole Lot of Questions and Possibly An Answer
I’m not a believer in destiny for the reason that I hate the thought of not being able to have control over one’s life. To think that everything is predetermined for you leads me to think what is the point of life then? Are we just robots in this universe programmed to follow a certain path like avatars in a game? This idea is too depressing for me which is why I’d rather not accept it. But a thought just occurred to me. Can destiny be actually a good thing and not something to be considered negative in the way I view it? Sure there could be this possibility, but for what reasons, I don’t know.
Could my views be affected by my western upbringing where in the West the culture tends to be more individualistic and independent while in the East it is more focused on the “we” mentality rather than “I”? Are eastern cultures more accepting of the idea of destiny if they already believe in serving the greater good? How would my life be like if I was brought up in the East instead of the West? Would I have entirely different beliefs which would lead me to make decisions that would lead to a much different life than the one I lead now? Or is it possible that whatever decisions you make which can lead to multiple paths, the outcomes will always be the same? If I believed in destiny then wouldn’t my life be much easier in terms of making decisions? I wouldn’t get caught up in worrying about making the wrong decisions and pondering the what if’s. It just is.
Would I be happier if I can accept the idea of destiny? If yes, then isn’t that a good enough reason to see it as something positive? This thought leads me to the idea of Gross National Happiness (GNH). You must have heard of it before. The king of Bhutan was the first to come up with this concept of measuring his nation’s happiness rather than its wealth. Though the Bhutanese can hardly be considered wealthy in terms of money, they are certainly wealthy in happiness. They are one of the happiest in the world and perhaps it’s because they have no trouble accepting that though they don’t have much, it just is.
So back to destiny… maybe I should think of it this way—we may not have control over predetermined outcomes based on whatever decisions we make in our lives, but we may have control over the decisions we choose to make. In other words, it’s not important what the outcomes are, but rather how we arrive there that makes the difference.
