Role of fate in our lives

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Question: Is there any role of fate in our life?

Acharya Prashant (AP): Fate, destiny, chance, randomness, do these have any role to play? For sure, fate has an important role to play.

What is fate?

That which occurs accidentally, that which is happening not out of your discretion, not out of your willingness, but is just situational.

You had no role to play in the incident, yet it happened. It's outside the purview of your control.

All such incidents are called as ‘fate’.

To be born is the first and most important act of fate. None of us decided that we wanted to be born. To be born itself is fate. All of us sitting over here have black hair and black eyes; this is fate. None of us chose this.

There are a thousand things that we do not choose. There are a thousand things that are just given to us. All that is fate, and so fate obviously is extremely important.

You do not choose your gender, you do not choose your age, you do not choose your religion in most cases. You don’t even choose which planet to be born on, and you do not choose the various situations that you come across every moment.