Fate

Originally posted 29th November 2006 on MySpace

Well I thought it well overdue for another blog post. Today's subject, children, is fate…

It's a funny thing fate. Some people live their lives by it… others think it's a load of old twaddle. I am sort of in the first camp – I am a firm believer in fate BUT I also feel that we do make our own choices in life too. I believe we all have a path to follow, but at times there are diversions off that path or a different way of getting to our next stage in life and that's where our choices come in.

For example… On day nearly 2 years ago I had an absolutely horrendous journey to work. I was still reeling from the death of my granddad and splitting up with my boyfriend, both happening some 6 months beforehand. In short I was a physical and emotional wreck.

I got to work and something snapped… I was fed up of my life and decided for once I would stop being a wallflower and do something about it. At the time I was chatting to one of our building maintenance engineers about the air conditioning (the importance of that will become clear later) and as the conversation progressed, for a laugh he suggested I sign up to a dating website. Had he not dared me to I doubt very much I would have entertained the idea (at that time I was very shy and retiring… no really I was lol! The confidence thing is a recent occurrence). I spent all of about 5 minutes writing my profile then just got on with the rest of my day. On that very same day a nice young man called Phil decided to send me a message. Over the next couple of weeks we talked online and on the phone daily and 16 days later we met for the first time in a Pizza Hut in the middle of Hull. It was one of the best nights of my life and we have been together ever since!

Would that still have happened had I not had such a bad journey to work? I was in a bad way that day and a harmless challenge from a colleague set in motion a chain of events that I will be forever thankful for. What made Phil contact me – he has said there were things in my profile that would usually put him off, but in this case he just had to contact me. Was it fate giving him a shove??? I have spoken to people since and the average time to find someone on a dating website seems to be within 18 months and 2 years, yet I found my soulmate 8 hours after I joined the site.

The really spooky bit is that in the last 2 years, we have found so many times when our paths should have crossed before we finally did meet. We have followed each other around the country – living only a few miles away from each other as kids and even visiting the same places on weekends. How weird would that have been if we did meet each other as kids? We have had holidays in the same place at the same time, I have had job interviews in places he has worked, while he was working there and finally, a couple of months before we actually met, he delivered a parcel to my best friend's place of work!

So you see, it was fated that we should meet… it was just a question of timing and choices. If I had split up with my boyfriend 2 years earlier as I fully intended to, or he had left his partner a year before when things started to get bad, we would not have met. There are so many times in the last 20 years where we could have met but didn't because either fate didn't allow or because of choices we each made. This is so true of so many things that have happened to both of us in our lives… but this is the strongest proof I have.

What do you guys think? What are your experiences of fate or do you think that your life is fully decided by you?

By the way… The significance of the air conditioning comment is that this is Phil's former profession… something he gave up only a couple of months before we met to re-train as a lorry driver.