I had a fulfilling discussion with a new friend last night about the concept of fate, and how unlikely it seems (to us, anyway). I like to believe that human beings have control over their own lives, for the most part, but that sometimes strange, providential things happen.
My friend told me a story about how she was driving her fourteen-year-old car to the auto mechanic to scrap it for parts. The car wasn't falling apart or anything, it simply had a lot of miles and she could no longer drive it due to a medical issue. The auto shop was only a mile or so down the road, but to get there, she had to drive across the hellhole that is Route 9 in Natick. She crossed the busy road, managing to avoid any oncoming traffic. As she was parking the car for the very last time, she noticed that it felt weirdly close to the truck in front of her. She shrugged it off, went indoors, and told the mechanic her car was outside. He went to check it out, and when he came back in, she said he was ghostly white. He told her that, right as she had parked the car, her brakes had failed. Not only the handbrake, but the emergency brake as well. Completely shot, they were rusted out after fourteen years of serious driving. As in like zero function.
If this had happened thirty seconds sooner, for instance while in the intersection, that story could have had a much different ending.
Being a very naive and sheltered twenty-year-old, I'm not sure what my religious and spiritual beliefs are yet. But I do think I have a pretty firm conviction, at the very least, that sometimes these things happen, for good reasons, and that maybe we're all a little safer and looked-out for than we think.
Or maybe I'm just naive. But I'd rather be naive and gullible than cynical and jaded, any day.
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