I feel we underestimate the role “chance” plays in our lives. It is natural to think that consequences are causal, but that in no way means that there is no chance. When I say chance, it goes deeper than meeting an irreversible accident on the road that might happen to us. I mean, our brain, itself might locate some reason and try to attach to that reason to produce circular reasoning. That is also the reason we are not happy when we face an unfavorable outcome, expecting otherwise, and try to reason again—neglecting chance again.

I realized this in college. I failed miserably in first year of college, let alone the reputation of Pune University. I saw many people doing well in the exams, but I wasn’t able to, in spite of knowing the subject better than most. It is not the point that I knew better, there were lot of times when all I wanted to do was score well in the examinations because that is what I was doing all along, ever since I was thrown into education system. I am also not questioning the education system. It was about doing the right thing to get the right thing, which, I didn’t do, and so the results. Well, but that is not chance, that was lack of information you would say, because if I had optimized my “study” to do score well in the exam, I would have done it. Trust me I had all the information; I feel I never got the chance to put that information into use.

Doesn’t it happen that you work hard, put your heart and soul into something, and the thing doesn’t happen to you, because you worked in the wrong direction? Or say it was just doesn’t meant to be. In a way it is like that sometimes—I mean it just isn’t meant to be. There is a thin line between you working towards a consequence and you working for a consequence. There is lot of chance that we are doing the latter, but we often don’t give the chance a chance, result is circular reasoning, when, there is not need for it actually.

Plato and Aristotle go opposite on this one. Aristotle says it’s to do with lack of data, and Plato says we always try to optimize, but cannot do so. I say it’s to do with the chance. I may sound conflicting for a second, but I am not, atleast I know that. In fact, I will contradict what I said earlier; we are in fact doing a very good job of giving chance a chance, but the act is more internalized, rather than we actually doing it. But, situations in life are not internalized all the time, in fact the bitter once are not at all expected and our mind rarely is ready to deal with sour moments. I think that is when we need to just get on with it, it is just a matter of taking a left or right, there is not need to make much fuss about it, that is how it is, no matter you choose or not, our actions are always separated by a thing called chance.

I am not trying to balance freewill and chance, and every time I seem to try to talk about this thing, I end up with same the thoughts. They aren’t much different, but there is something to them, something which tells me that there is chance I might untie another knot in the brain (hell even if it ties up few more somewhere else). I am going to throw a fair coin in the air, look somewhere else, what is the chance(after opening the eyes) that I can find out the coin that falls in front of me , and it shows up Heads? I do have to give it a chance after all.