For most of my life, I believed in a higher power. It wasn’t necessarily a god or God himself, but rather more of a supernatural, omnipresent force. Fate, destiny, the universe, whatever you call it, I trusted in it to lead me to where I need to be. I trusted that any hardships I faced or people I met came into my life for a reason.
I wouldn’t necessarily say that faith was a core part of who I am but rather a reassurance that I looked to every now and then. Nevertheless, it was a comfort I counted on to always be there.
Recently, however, I found myself doubting the existence of a divine force. All it took was one jarring experience and the wisdom of a friend for this image to crack.
I used to think, or rather hope, that seemingly trivial occurrences in my life were part of a plan. In a past article I wrote about my adoption, I touched on this idea, convinced that too many timelines had to match up perfectly for there not to be a divine intervention. Moving from city to city so often led me to people who would become my closest friends. In eighth grade, the boy who decided to be in my reading group ended up being one of the most important people in my life. What if he chose to be in another group? Would we ever have become friends?
As childish and immature as it seems now, I wholeheartedly believed that I saw signs when I got a crush. We would cross paths in the hallway, and I told myself the universe did that. Every smile, every common experience, every interaction had to be the work of something greater than myself. I thought of myself as a child of the universe, and she as a mystical mother figure. The boy I ran into over and over again last month was her telling me that he and I were destined to meet. The fact that we ended up at the same college at the same time was some form of magic.
It took me less than a week to fall head over heels “in love.”
Looking back, I am both embarrassed and ashamed that I earnestly believed this. Not only is it completely unrealistic to genuinely like a person so quickly but we weren’t even friends. We barely talked. We were just a boy and a girl who ended up in the same class and ran into each other for whatever reason.
When I confronted my friend about this, he said something that will stick with me forever: these instances aren’t fate. They’re mere statistics.
If you live on the same floor as someone, for example, chances are that you’re going to run into each other in the elevator more often than not. It isn’t fate when they pass your booth to fill up their water bottle because that’s the only path to the water fountain. They never went out of their way, and nothing forced them to either. Your existence just so happened to line up for a brief moment in time.
My friend then asked me if I would feel the same way about fate if I applied it to a friend in general. It’s absurd to think that the universe has destined you two to run into each other on campus — it’s just another ordinary happening. I run into people I know all the time without batting an eye. Signs don’t exist, but statistical probabilities do.
I know my dad always challenged my opinion on fate, but I always refused to see his point of view. He was logical, realistic while I let emotions guide my path through life. Fate, he argued, may account for all the good things in life but that means they also are the cause of the bad. This divine force murdered Jewish people and gave power to white supremacists. Children die of cancer and good people suffer. Why would the universe give her children happiness if she’s also going to pass on heartbreak?
I realize now how foolish I was. I think I held on so tightly to the idea of fate because it was romantic. It’s the stuff of Hollywood movies — boy sits next to a girl in class and suddenly they’re soul mates. What drove him to sit there in the first place? Is it fate that they’re in the same classroom? The universe could have created them at different points in time or dropped them on different continents.
While my belief in fate has shattered, I know the romantic inside of me will always cling to this fantasy in some way. I’m no different from most people when I want to believe in magic and the unrivaled power of love. They’re the stories I grew up with, anyway. I’m just not sure how much influence divine power will have over me anymore.
