Defining Destiny

Oh, NPR.

Today's Morning Edition had a segment about a double agent, but the author of the book--yeah, yeah, yeah, a real blogger would find out who that person is and what the book was, but that's not the point, so I'm not doing the research--said we have this concept of America's destiny for greatness, when really we could have gone either way. To which I say, isn't that what destiny is? That we could have gone any of a dozen different ways, that things could have and perhaps according to history should have happened differently but didn't? Reaching our current state of being despite a multitude of other options seems to define destiny to me: we're still here and it doesn't make sense that we should be.

And just in case anyone's wondering, this jury's still out on destiny because of the conflicts it has with my thought on free will. But since the guy brought it up....Personally, I choose to believe that we would not be given a destiny in which some people have ten homes while others have none. I like to believe that's the result of human machination, and not the work of a divine power.