Fated to end and Free to continue

Well, this is the end of my Walk of Fate. Although I admit that this was not done in a long span of time like the last blog, my posts has made me realize just how much of my life is affected by fate and how much is by my own free will.
I've had tons of fun writing my thoughts down, and I hope you had just as much fun reading them.

Poem of Fate and Free will

I thought I'd do something interesting for my last post, and analyze a poem. I'm just going to be pulling out exerpts from the poem that I found online, but you can read the full poem here:
http://drhsfatefreewill6.blogspot.com/2011/03/poem-on-fate-vs-free-will.html

Shake the hand that makes all your moves
Life is a game as the puppeteer proves
Maybe he lets you pull your own strings
If you are lucky, that's what fate brings

What I interpreted is that this author says that everyone is like a puppet on strings. Every one of your moves is controlled by fate, if you are lucky, then fate will allow you to make some decisions. I feel that this is exactly what Billy Pilgrim is like. He allows the puppeteer, in his case fate, to control most of what he do. Like getting on the plane to Manitoba. Although he knew that it was going to crash, he saw it as if he was not in control of the situation, and with no way of preventing it. Like a helpless puppet.
In contrast, the rest of the poem is more like Winston

Make a choice now and please make it quick
It's all up to you which path you should pick
Stay on board, fly, defy your own fate
Just make up your mind before it's too late

This part is telling you to choose whether you would want to be controlled by fate, or defy it, and do whatever you desire. For me, I see it as if it is asking you to make a quick decision before the opportunity is gone.  This reminds me of Winston because I think that his fate was suppose to have been working at the Ministry of Truth forever. However he choose to go against what was set for him.

This poem caught my interest since it reminded me of many characters from the books we have studied this year.

Fated to accept

A distant relative of mine knew and accepted his fate just like Billy Pilgrim, but in a different way.

I do not know all the details, but here is relatively what happened.

I'm not sure what he had, but it was something like cancer (although not as strong) that would slowly weaken him. When he heard the news, he was not pessimistic, on the other hand, he become even more optimistic, determined to make the best out of his life before he was not able to anymore.

The last time I heard any news about him, my dad said that he was still very healthy.


Although both my relative and Billy Pilgrim came to accept their own fate, how they dealt with it was completely different.
While Billy accepted his fate and waited for it, my relative made the best of what he could before he net his fate.
So can you guess which one will say what in this situation?

Fated to be and Free to decide.

I came across a very interesting quote on the internet about fate:

“Fate only takes you so far, then it's up to you to make it happen.”

My parents would always tell me something similar to this.
Something like: "We brought you to a country with very good a very good learning environment, now it's up to you to make most of that".
As I thought about it, I could interpret  what my parents said as the quote. My fate was only to come to Canada and study here, however, it's up to me to decide what to do with this fate. I could relax and take everything easy, or I could choose to not let my parents down and study hard. I'm free to choose.

Similarly, Macbeth was also free to choose. Macbeth's fate may have been to become the King of Scotland, but he was free to choose how he met with his fate. Macbeth could either have sped up the process and kill the Duncan (which he did), or he could have waited for the thorn to come naturally to him.
Either way, he was free to choose.

Fate vs Destiny

As I was typing out the previous blog on word, I tried to use different synonyms for fate to make my post more interesting.

However, I came across the word Destiny as one of the choices.  But when I searched the word up, it did not have the same definition as the word fate.

Fate: The development of events outside a person's control, regarded as determined by a supernatural power

Destiny: The events that will necessarily happen to a particular person or thing in the future

Notice that fate says that the development of events are outside of ones control. On the other hand, destiny is an event that COULD happen in the future. As I understand it, this could mean that your destiny could change if you so choose, or if fate want it to.

Take this for example: 

If a person, lets say Jasper, was excellent at swimming ever since he was small. Jasper would won many awards in swimming in both local and provincial competitions. 

His destiny was to be an Olympic swimmer. 

However, one day, he got into an accident and injured his shoulders. This would prevent him from swimming any longer. After a long time of accepting that fact, Jasper turned to another sport like track and field. As he practiced more, he ended up  being superb runner as well.  

His fate was to be a runner. 

See the difference? As I interpret it, your destiny could alter due to unforeseen circumstances. But your fate would always be the same, it would always be waiting for you at the end of your journey.

So have you thought about what your fate is?

Fated to meet again

I didn't think much of fate before this year. Sure, you see plots in movies and novels all the time that childhood friends were reunited after a few decades, but I never thought that it would happen to me.

When I just came to Canada and didn't know much English, my first friend was also a Chinese girl who spoke both languages, and helped me get through my first year. However, due to her father's work, she had to move away to the America the next year.
We quickly lost touch after that, and I didn't think I would be able to see her again.

But as fate has it, I came across her again at Great Lake Crossing Outlet over at America just last Christmas, seven years later.
Although I recognized her, I didn't have the courage to approach her...just in case I was wrong.
As it turned out, she approached me instead, and we ended up having a lengthy catch-up-to-date conversation.

Of course, both of us are extremely busy with our own school work, so we have not contacted each other since then, but I'm sure that someday, fate will let us meet again.

Here we go again

Here I am, again, making a blog for english class.

However, it's just me this time, Yuemin, and instead of writing about a specific book, I would be writing about the theme of "fate" (and free will) that was mentioned many of the books I've read this year.

I hope you will enjoy reading about my experiences with fate!