Chance and Fate

I don’t remember the exact context for today’s poem, but I do know that throughout my life, I have believed in divine control over key lifeevents, or “fate.”* So much of my life has been dictated by a few key events. My favorite example is meeting my friend Dagny; I literally introduced myself because she was standing there looking bored at the Honors College party at the start of my freshman semester at GVSU. While we’re not nearly as close now, that friendship triggered a number of other events in my life, including getting into web writing and design and, in a roundabout way, meeting a friend who was a motivating factor in me moving to Lansing at all. That was one of several key linchpin moments in my life. Coincidence? Maybe. Would we have met and become friends otherwise? Maybe. But my life was changed significantly because she was standing there, looking bored in a field, and I walked over and said hello.

*As opposed to the doctrine of predestination as espoused by Calvinism, to which my feelings are decidedly more mixed.

Chance and Fate

Originally written January 17, 2012

I find I don’t believe in happenstance—
That stars and planets never did align
Without an intricate and grand design—
That everything is merely left to chance.
When weather dictates movement over land,
When egg and sperm in mother’s womb collide
When countless others fade away untried—
I cannot think that this all goes unplanned.
When countless meetings come to pass each day,
Which mean that countless others never will,
When one dream out of thousands is fulfilled
When thousands leave and very few may stay
No—countless chances never come to be;
Fate permits only one reality.

Photo by Riho Kroll on Unsplash