The trap of fate

Often times in life, we find ourselves under the grip of that old question: Was it fate, or was it my own skill? Did something internal about my self contribute to the whole situation, or was I just swept along with the suddenly favorable seas?

No matter the situation, I know certainly that many of us are blatantly biased toward the former answer. Psychologists and lay people agree: We like the idea that our own excellence is a product of free will.

But I wonder: What if the circumstances changed? What if the question was not fate or skill but, instead, fate or incompetence? Did something internal about my self contribute to my own downfall, or was I just at the hands of something more powerful?

Suddenly, it seems, the bias changes. Suddenly, the majority are apt to put fate down as a final reason and utterly disregard their own ability to affect their own lives.

In some ways, I know the rationale for such justifications. It is a comfort, perhaps, to lay responsibility on the shoulders of another more indefinite force. And yet, that can’t be the whole story. Why is it so much more comforting to think fate has the upper hand whenever we fail?  Personally, I find the whole idea utterly backwards.

When I look at the pieces of my life of which I am not particularly proud, I do not find fate a comforting prospect. Fate is the ultimate trap — releasing responsibility into thin air and removing every possibility for positive change.

I find the answer of incompetence oddly reassuring. It is something true about my self that I can comprehend. It is not an imaginary force but something tangible and stable.

What is more, it is something I can grasp and manipulate into new potential. It gives me comfort precisely because it gives me control.

Perhaps people no longer like to admit they are fond of control, but I find control to be a unique and wonderful faculty. We simply have the metaphors all wrong. Control is not the omnipotent man-deity. Control is simply the pilot, who is, as ever, in a constant battle with gravity and all sorts of technological hiccups.

When we forget what it means to have a pilot, we forget one of the most fundamentally beautiful things about our human nature: we are conscious and aware. We receive feedback from our environment, and we enact our will on the world. To say otherwise is to deny the self entirely.

Fate should not be a comfort; it should be only another piece of the world in which we — the pilots — must navigate.

When we fail, we should be able to assess how we contributed to that failure. And when we succeed, we should be able to stand up and show our success to the world without guilt.


E-mail: cmcglass@indiana.edu