Between Shakespeare and Hardy: Navigating Fate and Free Will

For the longest time in my life, I have mulled over the debate between free will and predestination.

As a teenager, I believed strongly in free will. It was empowering to think that my choices alone could shape my path. But then life happened. My belief in free will was shaken to bits, and all of a sudden I felt pessimistic, hopeless, and found myself swaying more toward predestination—or cosmic determinism. It was easier that way. You could blame it all on some higher power and, in doing so, escape the guilt of choosing wrong or doing wrong. You could find relief in telling yourself: it happened because it was meant to be.

Yet over the years, as I navigated life on my own as an independent parent in a country where I started with no family and no friends twelve years ago, I found myself moving back and forth between Shakespeare’s philosophy—“the fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves”—and Hardy’s cosmic determinism, his “Immanent Will.”

Hardy’s philosophy feels brutally honest when you look at inequities across the world, or sudden natural disasters, or wars. But that belief loses weight when I turn the lens inward, when I objectively examine my own life and the choices I have made.

Yes, we as humans are helpless in the face of disasters and wars. But not when it comes to the thousand small, everyday choices that shape our relationships, our integrity, and the meaning we give to our lives. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves” stirs something deeper—it is a call to agency, a reminder of the supremacy of our will over destiny. It is not merely about meekly accepting what is given to us, but about making the best of what is handed down.

To be human, I’ve learned, is to rise above the pain and the misery—even if it feels like pushing that boulder up and down the hill for eternity, like Sisyphus.

For me, we exist somewhere in the tension between these two ideologies, because they are inextricably intertwined. Sometimes the lines blur between carrying the weight of forces beyond our control and taking responsibility for our choices.

This tension reminds me of Milton’s Paradise Lost. God knew that Man would falter, yet still allowed him to choose. And when he chose, he chose wrong. Providence set the stage—but the drama was ours to enact.