Tuesday, March 3, 2009

What's the difference between fate and destiny?

One word derivative of "fate" is "fatality", another "fatalism". Fate implies no choice, and ends fatally, with a death. Fate is an outcome determined by an outside agency acting upon a person or entity; but with destiny the entity is participating in achieving an outcome that is directly related to itself. Participation happens willfully.

Used in the past tense, "destiny" and "fate" are both more interchangeable, both imply "one's lot" or fortunes, and include the sum of events leading up to a currently achieved outcome.


Although the words are used interchangeably in many cases, fate and destiny can be distinguished. Modern usage defines fate as a power or agency that predetermines and orders the course of events. Fate defines events as ordered or "inevitable". Fate is used in regard to the finality of events as they have worked themselves out; and that same sense of finality, projected into the future to become the inevitability of events as they will work themselves out, is Destiny. In classical and European mythology, there are three goddesses dispensing fate, The "Fates" known as Moirae in Greek mythology, as Parcae in Roman mythology, and Norns in Norse mythology; they determine the events of the world through the mystic spinning of threads that represent individual human destinies.

I feel that "fate" is an underlying reaction to what you do, and that its the consequences of your actions. "Destiny" is unchangeable. Its what you are "programmed" to do in life and you can't stop it from happening.All are fated to certain things at the moment of conception or manifestation. There are certain individuals, however, who are born or who awaken to a specific function that must be fulfilled, a function that reaches beyond the ordinary life of the average person and impacts all in some way. In the end, these are the ones who have had a destiny.

Some people say that They see fate as more of the deterministic inevitability of life. Nothing supernatural, just the cause and effect patterns of everything.They also say that destiny is more of a spiritual term used when someone says a mystical force like a god has decided for them to do something specific. Some people say that "FATE and DESTINY" has the same meaning.

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