Realizing my own Team Free Will inconsistencies while watching Season 5 of SPN

A bit of a retro post... Wrote this back a few years ago now... Moving it from that horrible Lj...

My usual mode of "over thinking/over analyzing" (dude, I should get this motto tatooed on my ass) has spawned another lovechild, as I ask the increasingly pertinent question...what exactly is the nature of free will? 

I will admit that I have been pontificating this question for some time now, and sadly, until now, without seeing my own inherent inconsistencies...

One of the best discussions I have ever witnessed of this topic was in one of the Mondays that occurred for Mulder and Scully on the sixth season episode of the x-files aptly named Monday. In this eppie, Mulder wakes up, his waterbed has sprung a leak, shorts out his alarm clock making him late, water logging his cell phone, and the downstairs apartment in the process. He goes to cash his paycheck and someone is attempting to rob the bank. Scully, tracking down Mulder, winds up in the bank too, Mulder gets shot, and the would be robber blows them all sky high. and this happens over and over and over and over and over and over and over. and then one more time...

The conversation about free will is Mulder's mainly. In one of the Mondays, he talks about how no two incarnations of the same day could in fact be identical, or end exactly the same way because there are too many variables. So many people making so many decisions...the idea that all of them would make exactly the same decisions at precisely the same moment is too contrived, and impossible. He feels that Scully can't possibly believe in free will, if she can believe that the day will keep repeating exactly the same as it did the time before. Scully, assures him she does believe in free will, but a limited free will. People are inevitably free to be who they are.

In my last post I wrote a little bit about my lack of belief in destiny, or at least that I wouldn't believe it or accept it if I had one...I, like Dean, want to believe that I have control over what I do with my insignificant life. This has always been a constant with me, caveated by an understanding that what Scully said is probably true...that we limit ourselves and our own possibilities. Seeing the fifth season of Supernatural though, with all the talk about fee will and destiny that has been flying around at least so far, I've noticed some inconsistencies in character views (mainly Deans, and his adherence to a belief in free will despite his feeling of "cheating death": see below) have made me look at the inconsistencies I have in my own feelings of free will and destiny...and now, a few of those points...

1. The ever popular: Do Soul Mates exist? Well, it's a beautiful, romantic idea, but I have never accepted it (read, "If you believe in soul mates, I've got a spaceship to sell you"). The idea that there is that one person that you are destined to meet? Imagine all the things, all the decisions you had to make in your life to get where you are today. And now, think about that "other person" you are destined to meet, and all the decisions he (/she/neuter?) had to make to get to where they are in life. And yet, with all those decisions, places, roads, etc, that person was somehow meant to be found by you...To me, that makes the whole process sound contrived. How could that possibly happen but by plan then? and so, a resounding "no" on the existence of soul mates.

2. Dean, sweetie, listen up for this one: Is there such thing as "cheating death"? This is harder, because it is one I have held to, and have actually of late decided maybe I need to adjust my thinking on it. I completely understood Dean's feelings about dying. How he was "supposed to die", when he was electrocuted and that the preacher's wife put the reaper on another poor bastard instead, about how his dad went to hell so Dean would live, his countless deaths in Hell, etc., etc., but when I was reading the very well thought out blog article someone wrote on the winchester family business site, I realized that I couldn't accept that idea, and that it is actually anti-free will. For me, I always felt like utilization of modern medicine was a way of cheating death. not that I don't use medicine (tylenol, advil, robitussin, no prob!), I'm talking more about the need for insulin, allergy shots, or needed surgery. That if it wasn't for those things, those people wouldn't be alive, and so therefore, they have essentially cheated death. But this seems like anti-free will thought, because it means that we feel we were destined to die at that time that we needed the surgery, or had the car accident, or had the shot saving us from a bee sting, and the fact that we didn't means that we have gone against destiny. That we are outside of the time we were supposed to be here. That makes free will sound wrong. It's saying we should just accept death, and hey, I have to quote Dylan Thomas on that one-I have no intention of going gently into that good night... 

3. And my personal favorite: "If you believe in coincidence, you're not paying attention." This is also anti free will, as it speaks to things (read: all circumstances big and small) being contrived. Everything has some hidden meaning, and everything leads to something... Although I am all about going against the grain and finding your own way, I have quoted this phrase since it was first said by Professor Jeanne Humphreys in my freshman year english comp. 101 class. this is a harder one to for me to evaluate, because I have always felt that this was true. It is this attention to detail that means I almost always figure out the movie, the book, the ending of a tv series, before it happens. 

If I were to try to spell out how I feel about free will and destiny, I guess I would say they both do exist. Maybe it's not in full Tolstoy War and Peace form. Maybe the exact specifics aren't laid out for us. Or maybe it's more accurate to say life isn't scripted, but maybe it is laid out in outline form. Within that framework, we are free to do what we want, knowing that who we are limits the possible choices we have, and in so doing, limits the possible ultimate outcomes available to us. Is everything inevitable? I think it rests in our ability to fully realize ourselves and our ability to change what we see, or how we react, even if we can't change who we are. We are more than the sum of our parts, and we can be more, or less than we are today.