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Concept
Destiny
Summary
Destiny, sometimes also called fate (), is a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual.
Although often used interchangeably, the words fate and destiny have distinct connotations.
Traditional usage defines fate as a power or agency that predetermines and orders the course of events. Fate defines events as ordered or "inevitable" and unavoidable. This is a concept based on the belief that there is a fixed natural order to the universe, and in some conceptions, the cosmos. Classical and European mythology feature personified "fate spinners," known as the Moirai in Greek mythology, the Parcae in Roman mythology, and the Norns in Norse mythology. They determine the events of the world through the mystic spinning of threads that represent individual human fates. Fate is often conceived as being divinely inspired.
Fate is the future scenario, which cannot be determined by decisions an individual will make. However, Destiny is about the present, where every decision an individual has made has led them to their present scenario.
Fate is used with regard to the finality of events as they have worked themselves out; and to that same sense of "destination", projected into the future to become the flow of events as they will work themselves out.
Fatalism refers to the belief that events fixed by fate are unchangeable by any type of human agency. In other words, humans cannot alter their own fates or the fates of others.
Distinguished from fate and destiny, fortune can refer to chance, or luck, as in fortunate, or to an event or set of events positively or negatively affecting someone or a group, or in an idiom, to tell someone's fortune, or simply the end result of chance and events. In Hellenistic civilization, the chaotic and unforeseeable turns of chance gave increasing prominence to a previously less notable goddess, Tyche (literally "Luck"), who embodied the good fortune of a city and all whose lives depended on its security and prosperity, two good qualities of life that appeared to be out of human reach.
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