Growing up into Fate

Growing up.

I've been thinking that maybe "growing up" really just means working on and strengthening bits of our humanity. Growing up and staying grown up requires work. Week by week, I'm required to make little choices and perform small tasks in things such as emotional maturity, kindness, fiscal responsibility, and career progress.

I constantly make choices to sway me towards a certain direction. Whether it's accumulating experience, knowledge, or skills. I make a choice when I sit down and read a book or watch a youtube video. I make a choice when I go for a run or a bike ride.

I wish I had possessed an intuitive understanding of this in high school and college: how little things add up to larger things and how attention to the little things was your due diligence to a larger picture or goal.

But I'm glad I eventually came to this conclusion on my own and although I feel "behind" everyone else in success, I am content knowing I'm on the path to becoming my own person.

Fate. Destiny.

I actually believe that everything happens for a reason. I prefer beliefs in destiny, fate, and karma over chaos and randomness. Without such beliefs, it would be impossible for me to maintain a sense of sanity in this forever changing and dynamic world. The unexpected can always strike because it is impossible to see all of the seemingly infinite variables of life's equation. Making sense of the chaotic and seemingly random is why mathematicians work with summations and series and laplace transforms. In fact, laplace transforms are the reason I clutch onto fate and destiny.

If every action we take turns us into a certain person and leads us towards a certain path and towards certain places in life, spiting even the most difficult of circumstances, therein lies our fate/destiny. God plays a part but he gives us control and free will over what we do with our circumstances.

In many ways, I feel like I was destined to meet the people I have formed relationships with in my life. I ended up here in the Bay Area, despite my shortcomings as a young and naive soul with many imperfections. Looking back, I feel happy. But I continue to grow up and I strive to make my destiny even better.