Do The Choices We Make In Life Effect Our Destiny?

You can make your choices up to a point, but not everything can be controlled, even if you make the 'right' choices.

For example, you decide not to smoke because you don't want to have cancer. You can have lung cancer nevertheless, whereas someone who smokes might never get it.

And as for being careful not to get run over or sg, and you'll live a long time... Well sorry but I don't buy that at all. Then you could never cross a street, you could never go on a plane, you could never do this or that. And still it wouldn't guarantee a long life. For example that car crash thing... You can always drive very carefully and according to all the rules, and all it takes is one drunk driver, or someone who falls asleep at the wheel, or is reckless, and there's nothing you or your precautions can do about that.

In that sense I believe in a destined death - but what you make of your life in the mean time is absolutely in your own hands.

laura you'remerely refering to the consequences of you or other peoples actions, someone else decides to drink and drive. is that because it is my destiny that they should be drunk and knock me down? i dont think so.

what ive noticed here is that people r using it looking at big events like death and meeting people u marry etc... but if our lives are predetermined then surely that would mean it is predetermined that i should be sitting at my computer at this time, that my bro should be next to me playing the xbox, that you should be reading this?

do they make a difference about anythign in the grand scheme of things? no and if life was predetermined then it would mean that me just answering the fone, headin ghalf way down the stairs then coming back here to finish the message and post it all had some bearing on mien or someone elses life and i still refuse to believe that.

if your choices affect the way yor life turns out then what the hell did i do in the first three years of my life?

How are you asking this? Do you mean are we predestined to a certain destiny? Or do you mean do our choices really mean anything in the long run?

Of course our choices affect our destiny, otherwise life is meaningless. What's the point of doing the right thing, if right and wrong don't mean anything?

Predestination amounts to the same thing really. If you're just an puppet having your strings pulled by some otherworldly power, then your choices are meaningless and so is life. What's the point of all the hurt we endure in our stay on this planet if it doesn't matter in the end? Who would live a good life, trying hard to make the right choices and feeling bad when they can't/don't if it means just as little (or as much) to live a bad life?

Adrian

You were growing up and slowly gaining the ability to see yourself as a subject, think by yourself and make some choices.
Our lives are built through accidents, interactions and choices. Choices do not decide everything but represent the only hold you've got on your life. Don't lose it.


Ponrauil

This is my opinion:

The purpose of life is just to LIVE! Nobody has any specific reason for being here - we all exist by chance. People invent stuff like religion and heaven because they can't bear the thought that its as simple as this: when its over, its over - no after-life, no heaven. Its all make-belief to give people a reason to plod on through their daily ups and downs. I don't believe in God because, I can accept that you've only got one shot, and my theory - make the best of it you can. People who hide behind religion are just blinding themselves from the obvious truth of it all because it makes LIFE easier to get through.

Religion is also the cause of more death in this world than anything-else, through civil war and ethnic cleansing, so how can it possibly be good? Are the people who carry out such massacres bad in THEIR own eyes? No, because they believe what they do is right, as is what Christians, Buddhists, Muslims and everyone-else believes is right in THEIR own eyes.

But I digress - Destiny? Nope - if we all have set paths, what choices do we have? We do have choice because all of us exercise it every day, even down to the smallest things which, as has already been discussed, can have th biggest consequences. Its all a big picture of chaos with one thing indirectly affecting another, and we relate to these events with varying degrees of personal attachment depending on how they present themselves in our lives. We shape our own lives and, maybe unknowingly, the lives of others but there is no such thing as destiny.

That's my 5 cents worth anyway.

That one I like.

I do think you control your life - no, you try to control it. Life is too complicated to be defined as "your choices will define your future".

Often other people will make choices for you, or define your future (ie your boss or parents). If you've been a victim of a crime, you did not make the choice, someone else did and screwed up your life.

I would like to believe that death is pre-determined, but don't really buy it. I had too many friends die at a young age - all of which could have been prevented. They were all "accidents" of some sort. I don't think their time was up.