There is no such thing as destiny. There are only adopted tendencies, which are caused by opinions of family, friends who tell us how to dress, what to eat and superstitious beliefs as explained in the Konkani song, ‘Visvas Dhorinaka’ by Francis de Tuem. All these influences gradually eat away our God given free will. Therefore, we have to choose the good and reject the bad effects that we have come across in the process of our growing up. Unless we do that, we will be slaves of tempting tendencies that create habits and destroy our pure ‘free will’.
A tendency is like a river born on the top of the mountain flowing downwards; at one place as a stream; at another place as a waterfall; a little further, as winding river and finally, as a wide river mouth to join the ocean. Surely, the ocean is not the river water’s destiny; but its tendency to move from higher level to a lower flattened point. Suppose, the ocean was placed on the top of the mountain; and if the river’s destiny was the ocean, the water would have to go upwards to meet its destined ocean, on the mountain peak. So, we see that what we call destiny is only a tendency.
Secondly, suppose you ask a vegetarian, “Why don’t you eat meat?” The answer, usually we get is: “Our family is habituated to eat only vegetables; or my friend said that meat is bad for health”. This shows that the decision to eat meat is not taken by free will, but by habituation of the mind from childhood. Similarly, success, failure, accidents, crimes, robberies are our actions. Making our destiny. It is 100% our creation, perhaps, created due to destructive ideas within us or evil suggestions from evil individuals.
God has no share in deciding our actions. He does not interfere in our day to day lives; if He did, then we would not have pure free will. Often, we say: “Oscar, was fated to die in that road accident” or “Angela was destined for greatness”. God does not interfere in our choices. He has only fixed a time period of our life to live on this temporary Earth. Therefore, Oscar died at the predetermined time period in this ‘short-term’ world. The cause of the road accident on the last fixed day of his life, was his last choice to drive recklessly or to drink and drive. Similarly, Angela climbed the ladder of greatness because she consciously rejected bad tendencies and chose good habits with the wisdom of her pure God given free will.
God has not wished us to live on this Earth permanently. He has fixed a limited time period for us to live here. It is like this: A cow tied with a rope to a pole is free to roam within its boundary. Similarly, God controls our temporary-life rope –death date.
Here in this temporary life, we have to discover our God given free will like the crow, who was chased by many birds because the crow had a piece of meat in its beak. The crow attempted to escape by holding on to the piece of meat. But after a while it decided to drop it. The birds stopped chasing it and went after the piece of meat. Finally, the crow sighed in relief saying, “I might have lost the piece of meat but I have found my freedom.” Similarly, drop your wrong tendencies and discover your pure free will.
