There is a saying "The universe will always meet you halfway." Another is "God will never give you more than you can handle." Both of those indicate that no matter how bad or tough things get, that you'll find a way to get through them, if you put forth the effort. A cynical person could take those sayings and respond with several examples of how the world is a cruel place and no matter how much effort you put in, you'll just get crushed by life. I'm not going to deny that it happens more than we would like, but I have to wonder though if there are factors at work that we can't always see. Considering we don't fully understand the complexity of our own planet, it's hard to imagine that we would grasp the entirety of what's at work throughout the universe. Now when I say the universe I don't just mean the vast open space that's out there, although it's probably a part of it. Instead I mean more of everything everywhere all the time, which can be kind of mind blowing if you try to think about it too hard. Ultimately it could all come down to the various forms of energy that are out there, each one influencing the other.
Now I'm something of a dreamer, but at the same time I'm torn by practicality. I know there are things out there that I don't understand. They could be classified as paranormal or new age or pseudoscience. Some of it may be so far out there that to most people they'd simply call it magic. As I've said before, magic is just science that we don't yet understand. If you were to show da Vinci a color television he'd have no idea what he was looking at. He wouldn't know anything about electricity or transistors, much less life-like moving images transmitted from somewhere else. At first he wouldn't even know where to start in order to begin to understand what was in front of him. It could take years of study for him to start to comprehend the very idea of television. That's taking one of the most brilliant minds of his time, now imagine showing someone who wasn't nearly as intellectual. Would they simply run away screaming from what appears to be some magical device? I would have to imagine that at every moment in human history we're at that point. No matter how far advanced we think we are, there is always some next step. Some new discovery on the horizon. Something out there is beyond our understanding and could be so far away from our comprehension that we dismiss it. It could be that we do this until we finally reach a point where we're meant to understand it.
It can be very easy to mistake coincidence for fate and the other way around. A practical (or cynical) person could chalk up every experience to just the result of random events colliding with each other. Sometimes things may seem like they were done with some kind of design in mind, but that's only because mathematically it was bound to happen at some point and we shouldn't take it for anything more than happenstance. Others see connections everywhere. No event or detail is too small to fit into some grand plan. Everything potentially means something. Both are extremes and I have a feeling that reality is closer to the middle. There are probably random occurrences that result in happy coincidence. Then there are also series of events that could only exist because of everything surrounding them had to happen a certain way. Those could be seen more as fate rather than just a perfect storm of random events. I guess it all depends on your general outlook of the universe.
Something I've noticed though is that things do tend to happen for a reason, even if that reason is a mystery to us. Christians would say how it's part of God's mysterious plan. They could be right. If things are happening for a reason and there is an overall grand scheme at work then how could be possibly understand what's happening or why? We can only see our portion of it. Us trying to see the big picture from our own perspective would be like trying to determine the plot of a novel from a single letter on a random page. Now don't get me wrong, I still believe there are coincidences. It's bound to happen given all the moving parts. How can we tell which is which though? Just the other day I was trying to remember the name of a field back home. Geese are known to flock to this field at certain times of the year. It wasn't a big deal that I remember it and if I really wanted to it would have taken a few minutes on Google to figure it out. Instead I just left it and went about my life. The next day I was talking to my brother and with no prompting he mentioned the name of the field that I had been trying to remember. One could argue he would have said it regardless of if I needed to know its name. Another could say that I put the question out there and got my answer, even though I had forgotten about asking in the first place. Could it be that's how things work in the universe? That's just a small example of how something could be coincidence or fate. I'm sure there are people out there who have experienced events that could be argued either way. If something as simple as the name of a field is given out in unpredictable ways then what does that say about other aspects of our lives?
