There are moments in life when I sit quietly and wonder whether everything has already been written for us long before we were even born, as if we are simply moving through pages of a story we did not write, unable to change the chapters—only discover them as they unfold.
“This is your destiny,” people often say…
Suggesting that everything has already been decided for us.
For a long time, I held onto that belief without question. It gave me comfort to think that every heartbreak, every joy, every meeting, and every loss was part of a plan unfolding exactly as it was meant to.
But one ordinary day changed the way I began to see everything.
I remember driving back to my hometown, my thoughts louder than anything outside. In the quiet of that moment, I found myself asking a simple but heavy question:
“What if I suddenly changed lanes carelessly and caused an accident? Would that still be called destiny? Or would it simply be the result of my own decision?”
That question stayed with me longer than I expected. Slowly, it began to reshape the way I understood life.
From there, I started to reflect on something deeper from an Islamic perspective: the concept of Qada and Qadar.
- There is what is already written—the part of His divine knowledge and decree that we cannot change.
- And there is also the part that unfolds through our choices, where we are given the ability to decide, and those decisions shape the experiences we go through in life.
With that understanding, I began to live with more awareness. Not fear, but clarity. I started to see that many of the things I am experiencing today are not random at all.
The truth is, every choice carries a weight far greater than we realize when we make it.
It shows up in the people we choose to let into our lives.
In the opportunities we choose to accept or ignore.
In the moments we choose to stay in or walk away from.
In the risks we choose to take, even when fear is present.
And even in the decisions we hesitate on… the ones that never fully happen but still shape something within us.
Often, we only recognize the outcomes of our choices when time has already moved far ahead of us.
At the same time, I also learned something just as important.
Not everything in life is shaped by our own decisions either. Sometimes we are affected by the choices of others. We are placed into situations we never planned for. We meet people who redirect our path. We get hurt by choices we did not make.
And sometimes, we carry the weight of moments we had no control over.
Life, in that sense, is constantly intersecting—quietly reshaping us through both what we choose and what we never chose.
Still, no matter how much I have accepted life as it is, there are always quiet moments when my mind drifts into the world of “what if”
Not because I am stuck in the past, but because at the end of the day, I am human and I am curious about the lives that could have existed if even one decision had changed.
- “What if I never asked my partner to get dinner together the night we first met? Would we still be strangers today?”
- “What if I chose to go to the Netherlands instead of going on that trip across several countries in 2025? Would I have a different experience?”
- “What if I were too scared to do solo travel because I thought it was impossible? Would I ever even step foot in another country?”
- “What if I said yes when my ex-boyfriend apologized and asked for a second chance? Would we actually be happy together?”
- “What if I ignored my mum’s advice and accepted the offer to become a flight attendant? Would my life be any better than it is now?”
- “What if I had chosen to get married long ago, after being proposed to by different people more than once? Would I be happily married today or divorced?”
Every single “what if?” carries an entirely different version of my life. A version I will never fully meet, yet can almost imagine clearly in my mind. And honestly, that thought fascinates me sometimes because I wonder if another version of me exists somewhere, maybe in another universe, living the life built from every path I didn’t take.
Maybe she lives in a different place.
Maybe she stayed with people I walked away from.
Maybe she’s happily married, living the housewife life she always dreamed of.
Maybe she’s a flight attendant, traveling from country to country.
Maybe she became someone entirely unfamiliar to who I am now.
And I wonder what that life looks like.
Not because I regret my choices, but because I’m curious about how powerful one decision can truly be.
Yet even with that curiosity, I always return to one truth.
The person I am today was created from every decision I once made—the wise ones, the painful ones, the brave ones, and the uncertain ones. Every ending redirected me. Every mistake taught me something I needed. Every unexpected beginning gave me something I didn’t know I was missing.
Even the choices of others became part of my story in ways I could not control.
And perhaps that is where the quiet meaning of life exists.
We spend so much time worrying about whether we are making the “right” choice, when in truth every choice becomes part of the life we are building—one that shapes who we are continuously becoming.
In the same way, the decisions of others have also shaped my life. If certain things had not happened because of them, I would not be who I am today. Their choices somehow became part of my journey too, even when I never asked for it.
But that has also led me to understand something else recently…
Other people’s life choices are not mine to carry. In the end, everyone faces the outcomes of the decisions they make. Because in many ways, life reflects what we choose to give it—whether carefully or carelessly, knowingly or unknowingly.
Sometimes people let good things slip away without fully realizing their weight.
Sometimes they walk away from love they once needed.
Sometimes they choose themselves in ways they don’t yet understand.
And eventually, life has a way of bringing people face to face with the consequences of what they chose.
As for me, I choose to keep moving forward.
Because despite all the “what ifs” that still live in my mind, I genuinely believe the life I am living right now is the life I was meant to experience in this universe. Not because every moment was easy, but because every moment shaped me into someone stronger, more aware, and more grounded in who I am.
And I believe Allah guided my heart through every turn—not by removing choice, but by leading me through it in ways I may only fully understand one day.
That thought alone brings me peace.
Of course there are still choices I wish I could change sometimes. Decisions I wish I handled differently. People I wish I had met earlier. People I wish I never met at all.
But even those thoughts no longer feel like regrets.
They feel like understanding.
Because if even one thing had been different, I might not be here as this version of myself, writing these words, thinking these thoughts, living this life.
And despite everything… all the confusion, heartbreak, risks, detours, and unexpected turns—I can finally say this with a full heart:
I am at peace with the life I chose to live.
And somewhere, in another version of this vast possibility of existence, I hope another me is also at peace with hers.
—Auri Duham 🌻
