Who holds our destiny?

Perhaps it is an overdose of TV soap opera or the eerily close relatedness to a fiction I am reading or perhaps the newspapers are carrying past year reviews which brings about a reflective year end mood. It keeps me thinking about how decisions and their resulting actions can be so life changing. It is quite scary to imagine that life would be quite different if you have gone to school A instead of school B or that you have chosen this discipline instead of that or that you have joined this company instead of that or that you have remained single instead of being married  or that you have 3 children instead of 2 . It makes me wonder whether we actually shape our life literally by each decision we make (carefully or carelessly) thereby writing a life story which could easily have been  a very different one as well. On the other hand  it could be the hand of  Destiny which actually creates circumstances that make us choose certain paths in life thereby playing out the destined life. Could that be why some have relatively smooth lives whilst others struggle throughout?


Do we listen to Shakespear's "It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves" or John Lennon's "There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be..."

To me both hold truths. The family we were born into, the conditioning throughout the years, our body constitution coupled with certain karmic inheritance (if we believe in it)  play a significant role in where we are and what we are now. However the good news is we can choose how we want to react in each situation. Thinking through the potential consequences we then go on to make decisions in our best judgement and with good intention. Should the outcome disappoint or  fall short of expectation despite many trials, we must then summon whatever inner wisdom possible to decide how to react. When we watch a drama or read a novel it can be quite startling how characters chose to react in manners so detrimental to their well being. If only we can be as clear when living our own story. 

So on this new year's eve, I will resolve to remember Viktor Frankl's famous quote: "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."