I Blog Poetry and Prose

The Fork in My Road

Fiḍál (Grace), 16 Jamál (Beauty) 177 B.E. Tuesday, May 12, 2020

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30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS  (13+) WDC's Longest Running Blog Competition - Hiatus #1786069 by Fivesixer

PROMPT May 12th

Write about a fork in the road in your life, and how you made the decision to go the direction you did. What would have happened if you chose the other path?

The fork in my road occurred when I declared my belief in Baha'u'llah. I made the decision to change my religion was based on two reasons. First, reading the scriptures revealed by Baha'u'llah. Second, two dreams--which have remained clear all my life, I had when I when I was younger. What would have happened if I had chosen another path? I would be a different person today.

Could I, given the events in my life before the fork and the way I went about making the decision to become a Baha'i, have chosen a different path. Maybe and maybe not. I believe in free will to an extent, but I also think we, human beings, have limits on the way free will works in our lives. Most of the time we base our choice on what we know about a given situation or event. Sometimes we base our choice on intuition (gut feeling). Sometimes we use a combination of intuition and known facts to make a choice. Given those scenarios, where does free will come in? Your guess is a good a mine.

I like to toy with the idea of free will, but I also like to toy with the idea of coincidence. I don't believe in coincidence because I don't know all the events leading up to what, most humans, consider a coincidence. Since I don't know all the facts I can't say for sure if a coincidence occurs any more then I can say a decision is based upon free will.