At precisely 6:05 PM on August 1, 2007 in Minneapolis, Minnesota a bridge on Interstate Highway 35 crowded with rush hour traffic suddenly broke apart and plunged into the Mississippi River sending cars tumbling into the water and killing passengers unable to escape. At least eight innocent persons had the unexpected misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time in spite of the fact that they were doing what was very proper and right, minding their own business, obeying all the traffic regulations and carefully avoiding anything that might endanger others.

Things like this happen all the time. No one has any absolute guarantee when leaving home in the morning that he or she will return in the evening. What are the odds that such a thing could happen to you? Based on figures given in Wikipedia for the year 2002 when the world population was about 6.2 billion, on an average about 155,610 people died every day. The odds that you would have been one of them were about 39,840 to 1. So you can breathe easy. The chances you will die today are just as low.

And the chance that you might die today due to an accident is much, much lower. Only an average of about 12,920 people died each day due to accidents in 2002 which means the odds that you would have been one of them were about 495,240 or 908,200 to 1 depending on whether you are male or female. So the chances are very high that you will never die the result of an accident. The chances are also in your favor that you will not die today, but no matter how healthy or careful you are, a day is coming when you are going to be one of those declared dead.

In the United States, the state government sanctioned California Mega Millions Lottery at regular intervals pays out jackpots of at least 12 million dollars each time. The odds of winning the jackpot are only 175,711,536 to 1, yet millions and millions of people pay out $1 to $20 a ticket for a chance to win. The odds of your dying on drawing day are actually 4400 times higher than your odds for winning the jackpot. The odds for winning the lowest prize, however, are about 40 to 1, which means that 39 out of every 40 people come away empty-handed. Yet they buy the tickets anyway. Why? Because even the chance of 1 in 40 is worth the risk. No one who has won can forget the thrill and excitement of winning. And there is always that hope for one of the big wins. What would happen if everyone decided that since there are 39 out of 40 chances that they will lose, they will not participate? Then 40 out of 40 will win nothing and the California Education system, which benefits from the proceeds of the lottery, will be left with nothing. Everybody loses.

Every moment of every day whatever is happening to us at that precise moment is a chance occurrence. What were the chances that all those people in the bus with you would ever be together in that one place? What are the odds that that stranger from another country would end up sitting next to you, who have never seen him before, and you have never before been in that seat? What are the chances that you will both get off at the same stop or will sit next to him tomorrow if you take the same bus or that you will ever meet again or become friends or even end up married to one another as actually happened to a friend of mine who met a stranger on a train? Such things happen every day.

The odds are infinity to one that the precise alignment in your body of atoms and cells at this moment will ever occur exactly the same way with the same cells again, because there is too much irreversible movement. That didn’t prevent the exact chance alignment at this moment from happening as it did. It was just out of your control. Not wholly so, however, because you were actively and deliberately controlling the movement of some parts of yourself, making you somewhat responsible for at least some part of that alignment.

It is the same with that chance encounter on the bus. It was unintended chance that brought you two strangers to sit next to one another, but it was you who choose to get on the bus at that time, it was the stranger who had somewhere to go on the same bus at that precise time, so the chance encounter only happened because it wasn’t only by chance that you two were traveling in that place at that time. To go a step further, it might have been purely unintended chance that brought you two strangers together that once or crossed your paths again at some later time, but if you become friends and especially if you eventually marry, it could only happen because you didn’t leave it to chance any more but deliberately intervened and manipulated what finally occurred.

At every single moment of our lives, there is a coming together of persons and things, places and events that will occur exactly like this just this once, never to be duplicated, impossible to have been predicted exactly, a chance occurrence with odds so high they can’t even be calculated or expressed. At any moment something may happen or something intervene that will end or change our lives. We live in a world and in circumstances that are not under our control, but this doesn’t mean we have no control over our lives. Most of the time we get through the day without major accident. We manage to get our work done and achieve our goals. And when things do go wrong, it isn’t always by chance or due to someone else or something else, but because we ourselves made a mistake or did something that changed the equation and interfered.

If there existed a super computer that kept track of every particle of matter and energy and was able to project the path of each item and plot the actions and interactions of every encounter, could it predict the exact location of every particle ten years from now? Only in those parts of the universe beyond the reach of humans or any other living things that have the power to react unpredictably. Maybe we are immersed in a sea of elements and events that are beyond our control, but so long as we have the power to control how we react, we can and do alter the inevitability of what bounces off us.

Living with risk is an inescapable part of life. Every time we get on an airplane, we cannot be absolutely sure it will not be the next plane to crash. Every time we drive down the crowded freeway or just get in a car we cannot be absolutely sure we will get out alive or uninjured. What can we do about it? I suppose we could refuse to fly or to drive or be driven. Besides making our lives incredibly inconvenient and damaging world economy should everyone do the same, it would only mean we will die some other way or only experience other forms of accident. Destroying every banana in the world might eliminate slippery banana peels, but that would only mean that if we slip it will be on something else.

But this doesn’t mean that there is nothing we can do. Though many of the things that happen to us are unforeseen and unavoidable, many accidents happen because of carelessness or lack of attention or because someone neglected or overlooked some essential detail. Instead of feeling sorry for falling victim to so many unavoidable events, we should be proud of all the times that our carefulness and diligence and attention spotted dangers and avoided obstacles and guided ourselves and others to safety.

I don’t believe in Fate in the sense that the Creator planned out in advance every event of my life and predetermined the directions I would take at every turning point.

Certainly, many of the events in my life were not of my choosing and beyond my control, like the time and the place of my birth. Some were disruptive, like the bouts of illness. Many were pleasant surprises and welcome diversions, like the coming of friends and the opening of new opportunities.

You can call the above occurrences my Fate, if you will, but with one important difference. Though they happened without my intention or control, I always had some responsibility over what happened next, so the ultimate effects of these events on my life and my subsequent actions were at least in part determined and modified by me. I am not the creature of my Fate. I am the result of my responses to Fate.

I don’t believe in Destiny, either, in the sense that I was predestined to reach whatever goals or accomplishments or failures that have occurred in the course of my life. Even my final destiny, Heaven or Hell, depends upon my choice and my behavior.

I believe that the key to my destiny is in how I use the talents and opportunities that life presents me with, how I respond to the world around me, how I react to the things that happen to me, how I deal with the people around me, how I handle the problems that beset me, how I enjoy the blessings I receive and cope with the losses and sufferings I experience.

This doesn’t mean I do everything right, but it explains the motivation that drives me. But at least I am doing something that is my choice under my direction for which I have responsibility, so it is no longer just a blind chance consequence.

Yes, we live in a world where we are subject to forces and events that are out of our control, we interact with people whose conduct, behavior and intentions are often unpredictable and sometimes erratic. At any moment something might happen that will end or alter our lives or interfere with our plans. Such things do happen without our permission with no opportunity of choice or refusal, but not what happens next. The way we respond, the actions we take are what determine our destiny and decide our fate. We are not what we are because of what happens to us, we are what we become after it happens.

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