Do you believe in fate/destiny?
Yes, I do.
Everything is fixed and we cannot change it.
Entropy is everything.
Mosaicism, Christianity, and Islam swear by it.
What we do in life does echo in eternity, as Maximus so aptly put it.
But our agency is confined to how we go about fulfilling our destiny.
It’s interesting how nihilistic this may seem to some.
Only that it’s not.
It is stoic.
Stoicism teaches us not to avoid living our lives. It teaches us to brace ourselves and maintain control over our emotions in the face of overwhelming despair.
Because Life is about overcoming our Despair.
Epictetus was right:
Philosophy (Nota bene – Stoicism) does not promise to secure anything external for man, otherwise it would be admitting something that lies beyond its proper subject-matter. For as the material of the carpenter is wood, and that of the statuary bronze, so the subject-matter of the art of living is each person’s own life.
Epictetus, Discourses 1.15.2, Robin Hard revised translation
Let’s face it, people, Jesus Christ was a Stoic.
Götterdämmerung 