Free Will vs Predestination: The Straight Line to Our Fate

What I learned about choice, control, and acceptance while building a business

Life is happening. Every day, I wrestle with a question that keeps me up at night: How much of this was my choice, and how much was already written?

This isn’t philosophical overthinking. It’s the real tension I live with as a 30 years old living person, as someone who makes decisions constantly, yet watches patterns emerge that feel entirely out of my control.

Different lines. Same cliff. The only choice is how you walk toward it.

The Straight Line Metaphor

Imagine a straight line from birth to death, a universal path we all walk, regardless of our choices. The line represents mortality, our one guaranteed ending. The question isn’t whether we reach the end, it’s how we walk toward it.

In life, I made strategic decisions about money, content, talent, and growth. Some worked brilliantly. Others flopped. But looking back, the successful ones had one thing in common: they aligned with something larger than my individual choice. Market timing, audience sentiment, my moral conscience, platform algorithms, forces I couldn’t control but could only respond to.

So here’s what haunts me: Did I choose the winning strategy, or did I simply walk into a line that was already drawn?

What Science Actually Says

I’ve read the neuroscience. Benjamin Libet’s experiments showed that our brains make decisions before we’re consciously aware of them. Neuroscientists found that patterns of brain activity can predict choices seconds before we “decide.” This doesn’t prove we’re puppets, it suggests something messier: we’re not even in charge of the decisions we think we’re making.

Add genetics. Add childhood. Add the fact that I grew up in Nainital, studied English literature, worked in journalism, and then pivoted to hospitality. Each of these “choices” was influenced by circumstances I didn’t choose. My parents’ decision to be what they are. My school’s curriculum. The career collapses that forced me to pivot.

The uncomfortable truth: If I trace back any decision I’m proud of, I can find a chain of prior conditions that made it inevitable. That’s not free will. That’s a line already drawn.

But Then…Religion and Karma Enter the Chat

I was raised with concepts of karma and dharma. The idea is comforting and terrifying at once, your actions shape your future, but your future is also already determined. It’s not fatalism, it’s accountability. You’re walking toward the cliff, but how you walk, the choices you make moment to moment , influences which cliff you’re walking toward in the next life.

I chose to be kind and giving. I chose to not fight certain fights. I chose to build systems that aligned with profitability and values. Were those “free” choices? Or was I simply responding to my conditioning, my values, my upbringing?

Here’s where it gets interesting: it doesn’t matter. Whether I was “free” or not, I made choices that shaped my reality.

The line moved forward, and I moved with it, but the momentum I built was real, regardless of whether I was truly choosing it.

The Existentialist Loophole

Sartre said we’re “condemned to be free.” Even if our choices are predetermined, we’re still responsible for them. We can’t escape into the excuse “it was meant to be.” The line may be drawn, but we’re the ones walking it.

This resonates with me more than pure predestination or pure free will.

Whatever I do, workwise, maybe the market conditions would align. Maybe my training would make the success inevitable. But I still have to show up, think hard, and act. The line is drawn, but I have to walk it.

The Spiritual Perspective (Or: Finding Meaning in the Walk)

Here’s what I’ve learned from actually living with this tension: the destination is fixed, but the journey is yours.

Spiritual practices teach presence. Not because the future doesn’t matter, but because the only thing you actually control is this moment. Right now. The quality of your attention. The integrity of your choices. Whether you’re present with the person in front of you or lost in anxiety about the cliff ahead.

I meditate. Not to transcend reality, but to remember this: I can’t control the line, but I can control how I walk it. With presence. With intention. With care. With curiosity about what emerges.

I don’t need to know if I’m truly free. I just need to show up fully to the choices I’m making right now.

The Practical Reality: Predestination Doesn’t Excuse Laziness

Here’s where philosophy meets real life: If everything is predetermined, does it matter what I do?

Yes. Absolutely yes.

Because predestination doesn’t mean passivity. The line may be drawn, but walking it requires effort. Everything requires strategy, risk, execution. It requires showing up with intention. Even if the success or failure is “predetermined,” the effort has to be real.

This is the paradox I’ve made peace with: I can hold both truths simultaneously. I can acknowledge that forces larger than me shape my path, while taking full responsibility for how I walk it.

The destination is fixed. The journey is what we get to design.

What I Actually Believe (After Years of Grappling)

I don’t believe in pure free will. The neuroscience is too compelling. My choices are shaped by factors I don’t control.

I don’t believe in pure predestination either. That would make this moment meaningless, and I experience meaning constantly, in conversations with my friends, in building something from nothing, in the small choices I make each day.

What I believe: We are free within constraints we didn’t choose. Like a river that flows freely within the banks of a canyon. The canyon walls are fixed (our genetics, circumstances, prior conditions). But the water still flows with a unique pattern, still carves its own path within those walls.

My straight line to the cliff is drawn. But the way I walk it, the moments I pause to appreciate the view, the people I help along the way, the meaning I create, that’s still mine. That’s still real.

The Question That Matters

So here’s where I land: Instead of asking “Am I truly free?” ask “Am I walking this line with intention?”

That’s not a philosophical question. It’s a practical one. And the answer changes everything.

Have you wrestled with this question? How do you hold the tension between choice and fate in your own life? I’d love to hear your story.