That Whore Named Fate Part Two

When I watched "The Butterfly Effect" seven years ago, I remember that I felt goosebumps all over my skin.  The whole debate of "free will versus fate" now had a new meaning in my mind. The movie didn't fare too well at the box office but the plot had a deep meaning for me. Evan Treborn (played by Ashton Kutcher) is a psychology major and experiences blackouts and lapses in his memory. He discovers that by reading his old journals, he can go back in time. Having had a traumatic childhood, Evan tries to change the past. But he realizes that every little action he makes has a multitude of unintended consequences. For me, this theory holds that sometimes you need to stop playing God. This is funny since despite my family's religious affiliations and this solid unflinching belief in "predestination," I've never been much of a believeing in "fate and its merciless power" person. I have always been more of the free will person who believes that "we" have the power to shape our own destinies. However, watching this movie and of course, my own life events convinced me that there are powers that are beyond our control and there are some things which we have absolutely no control over.

Each time that Evan time travels and tries to fix things, he ends up screwing them over even more. The love of his life becomes a hooker at one point due to him constantly trying to create a happy ending and changing the past. The main point is that first of all, there is no such thing as happiness. As Julian from One Tree Hill talks about happiness, he describes how it's not a destination but only a state or a condition. You cannot reach a place called happiness because it doesn't exist. As Ellen Hopkins aptly puts it:

"Happiness, you see, it's just an illusion of fate; a heavenly sleight designed to make you believe in fairy tales. You'll only find happy endings in books. Some books."

The point is that you cannot play God. So you just need to stop pretending that everything is under your control at times and just breathe and relax and let life play itself out. For people like me unfortunately, this brutal reality of not being able to control or shape your own destiny is very hard to swallow.

On a positive note, check out the video below if you want to see "The Butterfly Effect," in a positive light:
http://play.simpletruths.com/movie/the-butterfly-effect/