“You said if it is meant to be fate will bring us back together. For a second I wondered if you were really that naïve, if you really believed fate worked like that, as if it lived in the sky staring down at us, as if it was not already within us, as if fate was not the choice we make, as if it had five fingers and it spent its time placing us like pieces of chess. Who taught you that. Tell me. Go on. Who convinced you you’d been given a heart and a mind but it wasn’t yours to use. That your actions did not define what would become of you. I wanted to scream. To shout. Its us you fool. We’re the only ones that can bring us back together. But instead I sat there quietly, smiling softly through quivering lips thinking, isn’t is such a tragic thing, when you can see it so clearly but the other person doesn’t.” -Rupi Kaur

We tell ourselves that maybe it’s not the right time, maybe we won’t be able to handle it, maybe things will go wrong, we’re too timid, too weak to do something about the opportunity standing in front of us, and staring us down. Fear whispers in our ear, “if it’s meant to be, it will be.” It’s funny; we put off seizing opportunities because of a simple string of eight pretty sounding words. We place so much on it. We put off taking action, because if it’s meant to be it will happen anyway. How do things happen? Things happen by us doing something about it. Maybe things aren’t as coincidental as we may think.

"Because maybe it's dumb to look for signs from the universe! Maybe the universe has better things to do. I mean, dear God, I hope it does… maybe we don't... Maybe we don't need the universe to tell us what we really want. Maybe we already know that. Deep down." –Ted Mosby

We’re little pieces of a big game, a game bigger than any of us. We go to the pub at 9:47 because fate’s hands placed us there, it’s where we were meant to be. We got up 15 minutes late for work, had to run back upstairs to grab the now cold coffee we almost forgot about, and take the dog out to pee. We missed the accident on the highway, that if we were on time, would have placed us in that same location. We happen to grab dinner at 6:45 when your eyes meet the cute guy across the caf, you end up dating, and in five months breaking up… it happened for a reason though. Fate brought us together and, only fate can bring us back. It was supposed to happen like this.

Stop hoping, and start believing in yourself.

Maybe we do this because it’s comforting. Because we can’t wrap our heads around why things have to happen the way the do. Because it’s easier to cope with the pain of letting something slip through our fingers, than fact that things go terribly wrong and hurt like hell, by blaming it on fate rather than taking responsibility, and trying to fix it. It’s easier to believe that things do actually happen for a reason, and that they’ll fix themselves. Personally, I believe in it. In fate. Everything you do is happening in order to lead you to where you’re supposed to end up. You’ll meet the love of your life when you’re ready, you’ll have a successful job, and everything else that you’ve dreamed about. But not if you leave it all up to fate. I do think that things happen for a reason. But a lot of it is up to you. Up to the choices we make, and what happens when we get there- well. We’ll leave that part up to fate, just get there first.