Fate or Luck

What is Fate?

According to Cambridge dictionary

A power that some people believe causes and controls all events so that you cannot change or control the way things will happen.

What is Luck?

According to Cambridge dictionary

The force that causes things, especially good things, to happen to you by chance and not as a result of your own efforts or abilities.

There is no such thing as luck I would argue. I might be right or wrong but the fact remains everything happens for a reason.

I am hoping this topic would serve as a prompt to my fellow writers, it would be nice reading your views on this matter.

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A footballer trains almost every time to score a goal and suddenly opportunity presents itself and he does score, do you call it Luck or Fate?

If he wasn't there at that moment in time, would he have scored?

What then is Luck?

Luck is simply a name we give to certain events that are often unbelievable to be true. We can't explain it so we refer to it as Luck.

Looking at this more deeply is it not obvious that believing in Fate and luck are quite opposite.

Fate simply means "what will be will be". So if a footballer is fated to score a goal then we can not call it luck now, can we?

In the past, I have heard people say they do not believe in luck. A friend of mine shared this concept, he never believed in luck, he was a strong believer that if you wish to get something, you should be ready to work for it. Then one day, something happened.

This story is simply a ploy of mine to support an argument and it is purely fiction, the names in use are simply pseudonyms

Storytime

It was a beautiful morning and Jack had just finished rounding up his reading for a test. He studied so hard as he had been all semester, he was so confident in his success that he let out a deep sigh of relief.

He had finished the Chemistry text at least twice and he knew each topic cover to cover. He is the type of person you would refer to as a "science geek".

This story wouldn't be complete without a second character, wouldn't you agree?

Then comes in John, as lazy as a boy can be. You see, John never had any interest in school, he loved spending his time fixing things that are broken and he was really good at it. So good that oftentimes people would come to his house with different technical problems and he would solve them.

Now, here is how these two stories meet.

John and Jack happened to be classmates and had that same test that morning.

While Jack was reading the day before, John had just received a call to work on a Computer whose printing command would not function properly.

John worked on it all evening that he had to take the system home. At last, he was able to fix the problem, he then plugged a printer into the system to give it a test run. Lo and behold, it was a chemistry question that came out. A print command was already in action when the System started misbehaving.

John was lazy, not dumb, he recognized where most of the topics came from. He saw the school's insignia on it as well as the Class, he knew it was for his Chemistry test.

Do not judge John here for not reporting his findings to the school authority, it was too late at night, besides why should he? It wasn't his fault that he happened to be working on the exact system which was used in preparing his test questions...lol

The young lad studied all the questions and was also ready for the tests

They both wrote the test, Jack's score was so high that it pleased the teacher as he marked his scripts but so was Johns and this shocked the teacher. John's was so high that it beat Jack's own.

What would you say about John's situation, Fate or Luck?

I would say fate, it was meant to be. Nothing happens by chance, everything happens for a reason. This "situation" can also be confused for luck for those who find it very difficult to comprehend what just happened. A secret John would keep to himself as he basked in this newfound fame.

Although this didn't stop him from being lazy, that experience had a million ways it could go wrong but it didn't.

He was in the right place at the right time, and the System had to be taken home so he could continue to work on it, he happened to have a printer at home which he could use for a test run. There was paper as well as ink in the printer, everything worked out perfectly. Would you call it luck or fate?

Fate and Luck

This is a topic that isn't often discussed yet it should be one of the most controversial topics today. What you refer to as Luck can also be what someone else would refer to as Fate.

If that is the case, then perhaps Fate and Luck are one and the same but the perspective of people is what changes.

Despite the differences between these two terms, one thing remains common, no one ever really knows when it's going to happen. We only know after it has happened and we refer to it as either fate or luck.

Do you believe in Luck?

Do you believe in fate?

Do you believe in both?

This is a question everyone needs to answer but do not worry, there is no wrong answer, it all depends on your perspective.

Lead image source from unsplash