Whatever happens, happens by Fate

The most unexpected, very sudden moment that changed the course of our long-term sleep and unconsciousness in nothingness was when we were first laid on the surface of this world. Emerging from the blood of our mothers, wailing and yammering from the shock of our own existence, unaware of how our lives would turn out to be. Years have passed, and from our innocence and naivety as children, we start to question how and why we were born of our parents, or why we were born without our permission, in a family, society, country, continent, and generation we didn't choose. We developed a sense of query, a cognizance that struck us at a particular point in our lives, and from then, we were haunted by our consciousness of whether or not we are in control of our lives.

Fortuna, Roman Goddess of Fortune

Fortuna, the Roman goddess of fortune, luck, and fate, was made popular by Boethius as "Lady Philosophy" during 523 A.D in his book, "De Consolatione Philosophiae". Boethius wrote how Lady Philosophy visited him in his cell to remind him that he is not in control of his life. He was a Roman statesman, scholar, and academic who had his life's downfall when he was accused of conspiracy against their king. Lady Philosophy, a woman personification of Philosophy, then reminded him that the sudden sheer of his life's career is inevitable and that there's nothing he could do to alter it, for life is deterministic impeding free will. He persisted to write to ease his agony and lament, while waiting for his execution and writing his way out of his unfortunate imprisonment.

Similarly, Epictetus, a Greek Stoic philosopher wrote in a fundamental stoic doctrine also known as the dichotomy of control: "Some things are within our power, while others are not. Within our power are opinion, motivation, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever is of our own doing; not within our power are our body, our property, reputation, office, and, in a word, whatever is not of our own doing.” He argued that our capability to grasp what is in our power to change is limited to internal forces, such as how we would respond to things that might happen, and that what is beyond our power are things that are caused by external forces such as our social status, and nationality.

Be that as it may, just like Boethius' life, our lives seem to be in a gigantic wheel of fortune. We never know when we would be on its zenith nor when we would be on its nadir. Everything could be a fortuitous event caused by an external force, and chance is in the hands of fate. Furthermore, the events in our lives are stimulated by a chain of antecedents, everything that comes into its existence was triggered in the past and bothers in the present and future.

Although this concept of life's determinism may impede our willingness to be persistent in living itself, in lieu of sulking over the unfortunate events given to us by fate, we should act on the internal forces within us that might help us make our lives bearable. We can control our perception towards things, and we can prepare ourselves for what might come by expecting the worst and accepting that its occurrence is inevitable, and enduring what is seemingly unendurable because after all, we are all in the web of fate.

In this seemingly incomprehensible universe, we're but lone creatures who struggle to find answers behind events that happen. We seek to learn how to escape the inescapable in a hope to live a blissful life, but as related in Cicero’s On Fate, '‘Whatever happens, happens by fate."