Could it be fate?!

Fate really interests me. Often I hear people say things like, “we were meant to be together” or “someday I’ll find my true soulmate, and when I do, I’ll know it’s fate.” bah…or things of that sort. I don’t really know what I think. I’ve had a few experiences that stand out as “whoa…that’s insane” type things. Things that seem just very odd, as if they could only happen with the help of some force.

For Example:
Weird story #1 from college:

When I was in kindergarten I had these 2 best friends, Erik and Joey. We rode the bus together, and were inseperable. I had the biggest crush on Erik. Then, Erik moved away. I never saw him again. I never really forgot about him entirely. Like I still remember some of the things we did back then and stuff…so anyway…
I finish elementary, finish highschool…and the parents ship me off to the university of my choice. It’s 4 hours away from my hometown. I get here…I’m usually a really outgoing person, but it was all new to me, so I head to my first class, and take a seat by the wall. I figured that way I’d only have to sit by one other person. It was my first day at school, my first class of the day, biology…a class of 400 people. So anyway, this guy sits down next to me in the one empty seat. We start talking. I ask where he’s from. He tells me. I look confused, and said…WHAT?! I live 5 miles from there (It’s rural farm country…we all know everyone who lives around us…that’s why it was weird I hadn’t seen him around)…then I asked him what his name was…IT WAS ERIK!!!

…weird. Turns out we have the same major. We’re both premed. What were the chances? OUt of all the schools in the state (assuming he went to a state school) he chooses the same one as me…ends up in the same class as me… <—ok that doesn’t seem all that weird I guess…but SITS RIGHT NEXT TO ME?! …when there was only one open seat. I dunno…

Weird Story #2 from college:

A few wks after that Erik thing happened…
My friend Ashley and her boyfriend Ian decided to set me up with Ian’s roomate, Kenny (Ian and Kenny go to a different school across Lake Superior). They told me all this stuff about him, how he was so handsome, how he was funny, and he loved Bon Jovi. I was game. So Ashley and Ian came over…and then Kenny came over later. Kenny walked in my door…and we stood there just looking at each other. I had went to college a year early in my hometown—during my senior year of highschool…
Kenny was my English partner, and we also had Sex and Gender in Society together ! I always used to tell my roomate steph (whos my best friend from h/s) that this guy in my english class was so cool…we should leave him an anonymous note on his truck—when I was in school with him. (she went to college early with me too) …How weird is that. I didn’t even know he was coming up here…

So those experiences…and countless others that I’ve had makes me wonder about fate…like…are those people supposed to have some sort of influence in my life? Is that why I ran into them, and run into them in weird places and situations?

OUt of all the people in the world…why do we run into the people that we do? Is it all just chance? Or does it have some sort of alternative meaning that we’re just not sure of? Think about the people you’ve met in the weirdest places…and you constantly run into them over and over…

I’ve had the same questions myself for some time, although it’s because I have dreams that actually come true- no joke. It happens about once every 3-6 months, and oddly, it just happened today. I was walking out of class, talking to some classmates and I realized that everything that was occurring for about 5 seconds was exactly as it had occurred in a dream. Everyone had the exact same clothes on, moved in the same way, everything. It was like watching my dream all over again. It was Bizarre as all hell.

I think the weirdest dream of all that ever came true was when I dreamt of two ladies that looked like a fairy and a witch standing in a room with a lot of books. I remember waking up and thinking, “what a weird fucking dream.” Months later, I moved to a new school. On Halloween, my class was in the library, and I suddenly had the de ja vu of the dream- exactly the way it had appeared- when my teacher and the librarian stood next to each other; one was a witch and the other was a fairy. When I had the dream I had never seen these two before, so it was impossible to have conjured their images in my mind beforehand.

It never ceases to creep me the hell out. I often think to myself, for these things to happen the way they do, every choice I make has to be decided beforehand in order for events from months prior to match up to events months after. Who knows.

Anyways, to answer your question, yes, I think fate exists.

Hopefully I’m fated to dream about winning lottery numbers. someday. :wink:

Hello mxchicmx and Matthew,

I have the same experiences. For example, the only time I was ever inside a New York City skyscraper was on September 4, 2001 (My wife’s family came over from Italy for a visit so we took 'em to NYC). As I stood on the observation deck of the Empire State Building that morning, I looked South to the Financial District. And as I looked at the Twin Towers (hand-on-heart) I had a vision of an airplane crashing into them. Eerie, don’t you think? Not at all. Let me explain.

I don’t board an airplane without envisioning stress cracks in the wing spars or without envisioning flocks of birds out there, waiting to be sucked into the jet engine intake. I sometimes think about great asteroids striking cities and stone-sized meteorites striking my car. And I was in top-form that day on the Empire State Building. I was wondering about a geological fault running along the Hudson; would a slight tremor of just the “right” frequency resonate with the skyscraper’s “fixed-free” vibration mode in order to destroy it? I was wondering how I’d escape if there were a fire some forty stories below me. Would I rather burn to death or jump over the side? I thought about what it might feel like to climb over the edge and jump. And everyone knows the story about the WW2 aircraft that crashed into the Empire State Building. Well, my mind wouldn’t let that one go either, so I imagined an airplane whacking into the Chrysler Building and as I said, into the Twin Towers. I even envisioned one hitting the Statue of Liberty.

One week later I was digging potatoes in my garden when my wife ran out to tell me the awful news. Can you guess one of the first things that went through my head? That’s right. I thought of my “premonition” (yep, now it’s a premonition) of an airplane hitting the Twin Towers. I thought, OMG! I was staring at the World trade Center exactly one week ago and thinking about an airplane hitting it! And I had a little shiver standing there in my straw hat, clutching my garden fork.

What I was doing was counting a rare “hit” while discounting all the thousands upon thousands of “misses.” My wife didn’t run out to tell me that an earth-tremor, an asteroid, or a fire had devastating the World Trade Center; she told me about an airplane collision. If today I heard that a meteorite had struck someone’s car, well, I’d think that I’d already imagined it.

I trudge along everyday thinking all sorts of things about the future (one of the primary functions of consciousness). Given that a steady stream of thoughts, apprehensions and supposed situations concerning the future pass through my mind, should it really surprise me that I have at least an occasional “hit”? And should I really be surprised at my propensity to count the few “hits” but discount the far greater number of “misses”?

I read a story some years ago about a nurse living in London during the time of the Blitz. She walked the same route from the bus stop to her job at the hospital every working day. But one day she had a sudden and unexplained inclination to make a detour on her way to work. So, she walked up several blocks before turning towards the direction of the hospital. And as she was walking along she heard a “buzz bomb” flying overhead, and then the dreaded silence, followed by a tremendous explosion. The bomb had devastated the very place she would have been walking had she taken her usual route. Years later, the nurse explained how this was a pivotal event in her life. She felt that God had spared her life that day. How else could one explain it? From that day onward, she’d been a devout Christian.

But consider this. Some 43,000 civilians were killed by the Blitz. Each of them was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Had any of these folks had an unexplained inclination to be somewhere else when the bomb hit, then presumably they’d be telling us how God had other plans for them, etc. In fact, we’re not getting a balanced sampling of the data. We only get to hear about the few “miracles.” The 43,000 dead people don’t get a chance to tell their story.

Studs Terkel, in his book about WW2, interviewed an American soldier who’d been in the Pacific. The soldier said that before he’d gone into combat for the first time he’d met quite a few combat veterans. He reasoned that if all of them could survive then so could he. But later, having watched guys next to him die, he figured it out; he never met the guys that died; he only met the survivors. Again, this means that he hadn’t gotten a balanced sampling of the data.

Steven Pinker talks about such things in his book, How the Mind Works. He mentions also the “miracles” of finding Jesus’ face in a tortilla or having the Madonna appear in the condensation between two panes of window glass. If you stop to consider the number of tortillas made each day by Jesus worshipers, then you wouldn’t think it strange at all when Jesus’ face occasionally appears.

I once met an Argentinean guy while traveling on a train in Spain. We ended up traveling together for a few days. I said adios to him one morning in Seville; I was headed for Portugal and he was headed down to the coast. But there was a rail-strike in Portugal, so I went North, ending up in Madrid the following Sunday. Leaving the Prado that warm February afternoon, I decided to walk down the promenade in the city park. Ten thousand people had the same idea, because the park was wall-to-wall people. But walking along, I happened to see in the distance a familiar ski parka. It was Ricardo. He spotted me at about the same time. What were the chances of that? Neither of us had plans to be in Madrid. Amid these thousands of people I happened to see the only person in the entire country that I knew by name. If Ricardo had been Ricardalina, we might even have suspected that “fate” was pushing us together.

My wife and I sometimes recount the endless events that had to happen as they did in order for her and I to meet as we did. In fact, the next stranger you meet, ask yourself what are the odds that out of all the people in the world you’d just so happen to meet this special person? Life is a procession of occurrences, and if we place a special value on certain types of occurrences, then we’ll remark when those occurrences happen; otherwise, we let them go by without comment. If a stranger you see today has the face you dreamed about last night then you’re going to be astonished. But everyone you meet has a face, and the vast majority of the faces don’t make much of an impression on people.

Just the other day I was in the market and a woman suddenly looked up as she saw me approach. Our eyes met for less than a quarter of a second, but just as quickly she looked back down to her apples. What impressed me was the fact that this woman had never seen me before, and yet in so little time she had dismissed me as utterly uninteresting and unimportant in her life. But what are the chances that we would meet like that? Each of our two lives had to go exactly as they did in order for us to be together in that particular place and at that specific time; just so that she could look up at me and see nobody. :slight_smile:

BTW, the chapter titled, “Origins and Miracles,” of Richard Dawkins’ The Blind Watchmaker also has a good discussion about coincidence and miracles.

I’ll see ya when I see ya,
Michael

edit: spelling

I’d stick more with the concept of pre-destination.:wink:

Great post, Polemarchus!

mxchichmx

I must say that your story is really unremarkable. If you had gone to a local college and not run into familiar faces that would be worth remarking about. It’s quite possible that unknown to you, another one of your kidergaten friends was sitting on the other side of the biology classroom. And as was remarked earlier, if it was a total stranger that sat next to you- the circumstances bringing you together would be just as “extrodinary.”

I myself, randomly got an apartment this semster right above one of my best, (and cutest) friends. But when I thought about it there are about 5 rooms that would be close enough to be trilling, and about 20-30 people that would count as friends. So it had to happen eventually.

Eh, maybe not extraordinary but very very cool. Its at least odd. Any ways fate sucks. Fate kind of gives me the feeling that im not really in control of my life. If it all already predetermined them my “choices” are all ready made up, since they are all ready made up I really don’t have any free will to do anything

Fate is possible but i also think that we could be puppets in this world, I don’t think we are in control of what we do. We are slaves to the environment and to feelings we don’t control. What ever controls those two elements truly controls us. If you get into the whole argument of free will its very interesting. Like if I don’t have any free will then Jesus couldn’t of died for my sins, because i didn’t have the choice to sin.

It wasn’t a local college though. My university is 4 hours from home…in the freaking tundra. I knew of one other girl that I was in kindergarten with, but she lives right near me back home, and I saw her on a regular basis, she also was in my bio class. and the school is huge…like 15,000 students or something. I just think that the chances of Erik being in my class (which was 400 people) and sitting right next to me was insane. True, if someone else would have sat by me it would have been equally “extrodinary” as you say…but someone else didn’t sit by me. Erik, my best friend from kindergarten, who just disappeared…sat by me. It was kinda like closure. Haha, I know that sounds dumb…but as a little kid, if your best friend just disappeared one day, woudln’t you wonder where they went?

Well I didn’t mean to lessen the pleasure of finding an old friend.

But I want to ask, how many four-year schools are within 4 hours of you? Were there any significantly closer. Between the mention of tundra and the charaterisation of 15,000 as huge, im guessing your not from a densely populated area.

Two of my friends like to regale me with the story of how they “first met” on three seperate occasoins. Well yes, two girls of similiar interest in the same area will bump into one another.

But isn’t it possible here that the amazing thing is the friendship itself, and finding someone this way is only a somewhat unlikely event?

I guess my point is you can probably find very mundane forces that keep you together with people of certian similarities, there is no need to posit an extrodinary one. Although, that doesn’t mean its not there.

Well, Theres the main univierstiy, in the twin cities…that’s humungous (i’m from MN) …then theres all the other colleges/universities in the twin cities… There’s about 8 or 9 Minnesota State schools…Winona state and mankato state and rochester and the twin cities is where most people end up. The college I went to isn’t very popular with the people from my area. Most kids that go here are rich, spoiled kids from the suburbs. (a kid downstairs from me even has a lincoln navagator that his parents bought him for coming up here) I just think it’s weird that he chose to come to dtown too.

I don’t know, i’ts probably just a huge coincidence…but it’s still an odd one.

Hi Polemarchus,

I agree with you on how meeting anyone is, in a sense, “a special occurrence”. Another very special occurrence is, I believe, the coming to the world of any individual. Imagine the odds that you had to beat so you could come to the earth, and have all those special occurrences that we are talking about here.

Hmm makes one wonder if our life is really meaningless like so many scientists and “philosophers” claim (or imply) it is.

By the way, you are right that most of us have selective memories and we do tend to value some happenings more highly than others, in the vast array of happenings. Yet I do not see how it is indeed not astonishing when someone can dream of someone else that they never knew, and see that person later. Of course, even for that to be remarkable, we would have to make absolutely sure that we never saw or thought of the face in our dreams that we encountered later, in the past.

Peace.

PS: Would there be much meaning in God if he beat us on the head to believe him, and put huge billboards on the street for us to remember his presence?

I had a huge post, and lost it.

I will reply again when I’m not so pissed off.

Well, in that case it is significantly more amazeing (about 5 times).