Destiny vs. Fate

Why me? Of all the god fearing, law abiding people..Why only me?? Perhaps this was destined to happen..After all, who can escape one's destiny? Must be my karma catching up on me...

Sounds familiar? Vaguely? Strongly??

We all have been plagued with these thoughts some time or the other..But we also inevitably alight from this train of thoughts once things start improving..And life thus goes on till the next mishap..

In the realm of open systems exists a word called 'equifinality'..It talks about how differnent initial conditions may eventually lead to the same concluding effect..Different causes, same effect..Different inputs, same final result...Now this again smells of 'destiny', doesn't it?

But there is one small thing that the word 'destiny' implies..Destiny, more often than not, talks about the future, about the events lined up in front of you that would ultimately shape your experiences in life..Fate, on the other hand, talks about the outside factors influencing you in such a way that leaves you with no choice but to be 'resigned' towards it..Hence the postive connotations (destiny's children, destined to achieve et al) for 'destiny' and the negative ones for 'fate' (fatality, fatal, fatalistic etc.)..And that is why our wise forefathers said ''one can shape one's own destiny'' instead of saying ''one can shape one's own fate''..

So given a choice, would you rather be 'resigned towards your fate' or try to 'shape your own destiny'? The choice is not as obvious as we make it out to be..If we close our eyes and look back at our past decisions, we'd get the true answer to this...