Fate is the Hunter

Dictionary.com defines fate as “the universal principle or ultimate agency by which the order of things is presumably prescribed”. I want to tell you a little story that I hope helps you see why I believe in fate.

A man was walking his dog one day, as he had done many times. On this particular day, for no apparent reason, the dog decides to run out onto the road. As often happens when dogs run onto the road it was hit by a car. The driver of the car did not stop and the man was left with his dog lying on the road. As luck would have it the dog was not seriously injured, so the man picked up his friend and tried to flag down other motorists to help him get the dog to the vet. Eventually a good samaritan stopped and offered the man and his dog a lift to the vet. Naturally the man was quite distressed and whilst driving to the vet our good samaritan became distracted by this and drove through a red light at an intersection. The car collided with another car coming through the intersection, the result of which I would only describe as fate. You see, whilst the human occupants were wearing seat belts, our injured dog was lying on his owners lap. When the cars collided the dog was thrown against the windscreen and killed. Fate had decided the dog was going to die that day.

You may think I made that story up, but as I had the misfortune of being indirectly involved in it, I can testify to it’s truth. It is one of the thousands of pieces of evidence I have observed that tell me fate is the hunter. Something I’d like to make blatantly obvious is I don’t believe in god or gods. This did cause some difficulty when trying to rationalize my belief in fate, after all, who or what is doing the prescribing? I have thought about this long and hard and have come to the conclusion that we are responsible for our own fates. We make decisions and take actions that lead us down particular paths. Fate is just the interaction of our paths with the paths of others. An important point with this is that everything, not just people, has it’s own path, from the individual atom, to the tallest tree, and to the universe itself. Everything has paths that are constantly interacting. Sometimes these interactions seem extreme or unusual, I just call them fate.

On a side note, another man who believed in fate was Ernest K. Gann. He wrote an amazing book about his life as a pilot in the early days of civil aviation. He talks about his belief in fate and how it nearly took (or saved, depending on how you view things) his and others lives many times. I highly recommend this book to anyone, it’s called “Fate is the Hunter” and you can pick a copy up on Amazon here.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad