Fate

I have always thought a lot about destiny/ fate/ karma....
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Are we born with a particular life-course charted out and pre-planned for us?
That no matter what decisions we make...no matter what paths we choose... we finally end up doing the same things, meeting the same people and experiencing everything else we would have, had we taken another route??
Had I chosen another school, university, profession or company would I have had a different life or through some twist of fate... through some other means it would have been a mirror image of my current life???
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Or do we start out with a clean slate? Solely responsible for however we may turn out...
Living our life as a result of the decisions we make....
That there is a possibility of many alternative lives...some better... some worse...
Its quite a scary thought that there is no one else to blame but ourselves for whatever happens...
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Sometimes I wish I could live my life over and over again.... making different decisions everytime just to see how I would turn out in the end... Pure curiosity, of course!
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Or what if there was a machine created which showed us the future effects of all our decisions... we could have perfect lives... erase all mistakes before they happened....
But then that would mean that Life would lose its element of surprise....
Afterall, its no fun to read a book when you already know its end, is it?