The road taken

One thing that keeps striking me about life is how big a part coincidences play in deciding where you end up. Think about all your best friends, how did you meet them? Mostly through school, geography or work probably. In that sense which school your parents send you to as a kid, where you grow up or what job you end up getting greatly helps shape who your friends are going to be. In my own experience, it's always through some random conversation at a crowded bar or casually zapping over different channels on the TV that suddenly form ideas and concepts about a following course of action. Ideas forming like that are highly dependent on circumstance, be at the right place at the right time sort of thing or as a friend recently put it, "the planets just aligned". This I guess is what people term as "fate". An extraordinary set of coincidences that lead you through life on a set course. What I don't like about fate is the idea of a set course. Like Neo from "The Matrix" I don't like the idea of not being in control of my own destiny. I need to know I have a choice. Choice and fate can co-exist though. The way I see it we are free to choose our own destiny, but in doing so we are all highly dependent on coincidences in guiding our decisions. These coincidences determine what information is presented to us when, and what people we come into contact with thus further assisting us onwards on our "set course". This course is however a one-way traffic road with no going back. Thus it can be determined as fate, as life can only be lived once and nothing ever happens twice or differently. What is is and there is no changing it, but that does not mean you do not have a choice to decide for yourself where your road takes you. And because there is no going back on this road, there is absolutely no sense in wondering about the hypothetical "road not taken" as made famous by Robert Frost. The road not taken does not exist as there is only one road and that is the one you are always on. Things can only happen the way they do and you just have to follow wherever your road takes you. Your choices in doing this are always half-chance, but I take comfort in the thought whatever direction I let my road take me, it is the way it was supposed to be and thus unchangeable. To bring back the concept of fate, you can then say that everything does happen for a reason as things can only happen in one way and thus everything that propels you forward on your road serves exactly that purpose, to move you forward. Where the road takes you however is totally up to choice and coincidence.