On the Metaphorical Night Bus of Fate

I do not sleep anymore. what I mean is that I sleep very little. I generally go to bed when everyone else does, between ten and eleven pm but I awake between three and four am and that's it, I'm up; so on a good night I sleep six hours and a bad night maybe four. This isn't healthy of course and I have yet to find a remedy despite many tried. 

What bothers me however, is not the lack of sleep, it is being awake at four am and being left completely with my thoughts, with no distractions or stimuli to divert or detour my meandering consciousness in disparate directions. My thoughts go where they want and generally this is into painful memories, forgotten responsibilities or dense philosophical musings. 

This morning I woke up and thought about the concepts of  fortune and fate. Many people believe in these and "believe" is the right word because to me these concepts are analogous to "believing" in the tooth fairy or a Santa Claus. When we are children these serve as constructs, i.e. I received money for the tooth I left under the pillow, ergo the Tooth Fairy exists to facilitate these transactions. As we get older people tend to see luck or fate play a similar role, "I just have bad luck" or " we were fated to meet and fall in love". 

Fate is clearly the heavier idea here and the one that is easier to disavow. If fate does exist then what part does free will play? If everything happens for a reason, then what the hell is the reason? Lots of unreasonable things seem to occur everyday. Fate leaves little wiggle room, if fate does exist then we are prisoners to it, both the good and the bad.

Fortune or luck is harder to avoid and thus easier to accept because luck can be folded into randomness. You can just get "lucky" or have a string of reversals that is just "bad luck". Good or bad luck can happen without calling into question the metaphysical nature of the universe and our place in it. 

I don't believe in luck but it is a lazy syllogism I sometimes fall into.  Sometimes when bad things occur it's like I am wandering innocently down the street and then WHAM, the bus of misfortune takes me out. It completely surprises me and I had no chance to avoid it. When some bad things happen in my life this is how I see it. This is completely false and dangerous. Things do happen randomly all the time but a good portion of what occurs is directly tied to some action by ourselves. Why did you lose your job? It wasn't bad luck, it was the fact that you suck at it. How did you win the lottery? It wasn't luck, you actually took the trouble to play it. Of course we are not responsible for everything that occurs, good and bad things happen through no fault of own own. 

The tension lies between what just happens and what we in fact, cause to happen. Fortune and fate take away our responsibility, our culpability. Conversely by taking responsibility for everything that occurs we are lifting a burden that shouldn't and cannot be carried alone.  We must find the happy medium, the compromise between chance and the destiny we create for ourselves. 

Consequently I am waiting for the sun to rise before I go running, I want to see that bus coming.