Why do we make mistakes? The simplest answer is - we don't?

A mistake is a misstep, wrong decision, or flaw in a greater plan. It's a concept we all understand. The question then isn't whether we have flaws in our everyday lives - of course we do - the question is do those choices and actions we make work to our disadvantage; because the end result is really what we're talking about here, isn't it? A mistake is something that makes our lives worse. And I don't really see any way that could happen.

What I mean is that every action has consequences, turning left leads one down a different road - like the famous Robert Frost poem. The path we take determines our present state, but who's to say where a particular action leads? We can all seemingly trace our lives back to some pivotal event upon which the fulcrum of our lives turned - maybe where we went to school, or what job we took, or who we married - but we are only looking at one side of that outcome.

What we can only theorize at in the vaguest of terms is what our life would be had we not made choice A over choice B. We can see that going off to college lead to rooming with someone that lead to meeting another someone that lead to the job you have now or the party where you met your spouse. The question is, was that decision a mistake?

If you like where your life is right now, then the quick answer is to say no. Things worked out, you're happy with your place, and everything is good for you. Great. But how much say did you have in the outcome? Would those seemingly random events (the roommate you had, etc.) have been duplicated if you stayed in your home town and worked a job right after school? Would you have met the same people or at least approximated the same life for yourself? The question now becomes how much of your life is controlled by environment; by the situations you place yourself in?

I firmly ascribe to the time-honored belief of the "road less taken," of "having loved and lost," and "regretting only the things I did not do," but lately I've begun to wonder. Fate is a large term, and one could easily argue that it's just a rationalization for the powerlessness or laziness one feels when confronted with the moment of action. If everything is predestined what's the point in making any choices? We'll all simply arrive where we are meant to. I've always hated that idea. It seems so archaic to me, and did so until I really looked at how the ancients viewed Fate.

Fate was a power

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