On Fate vs Destiny

When learning about astrology, the question of is our life already set or is it in our hands always arises. And the answer I've found is it's BOTH.

The most concrete example I can find of this is in the stock market. Since this is the year of the fire horse, let's use bing wu as an example (the two SPY 5 mins charts for fire horse days above). I use SPY as a summary indicator for the world because it contains the energy of the 500 biggest public companies in the US - a very big chunk of the buying and selling activities and the needs/wants/emotions that drive it, all around the world.

You would expect that bing wu would be bing wu, that they would follow the same path, or else why would they both fall under bing wu? Let's expand, zoom out and take these day charts as year charts because in bazi, the year pillar is what everyone knows about you - there's no hiding a broken leg, an exotic vacation, a new car, or a new relationship (ok, some of these can stay hidden, but these events are generally known to the public). Also, before bazi was developed to what it is today, the readings were taken off of the year, not the day. Looking at the year energy will help us generalise.

The image above shows a bearish case (top) and a bullish case (bottom). Why is one bing wu so different from another bing wu? Both follow the same twists and turns (the black lines show the corresponding event in each chart), however the magnitude of each is wildly different.

For example, say the first line was highschool graduation (they both graduated highschool in the same year). Second black line, they both go to university and graduate. But then they both suffer a loss, maybe they can't find a job and life goes downhill for awhile. Third line, perhaps they both meet someone to turn their lives around, they both meet people and get married, but to completely different types of spouses. Fourth line, one spouse hinders growth, the other person's spouse lifts them up and supports them to new heights. Fifth line, they both suffer losses, perhaps a parent's passing, one person puts in some hard work to self-reflect and finds he/she can over come this loss, the other person does not put in the same energy and cannot over come this loss, or maybe doesn't have the support the bullish person does.

This is only one example, it doesn't necessarily have to be those events: highschool graduation, university graduation, marriage, or loosing a loved one. The only certainty is that, life, in a predictable sequence, does present challenging times, easier times, times for hard work, etc - it's up to us to decide how far to take them. Even though the above charts are both fire horses, given a similar set of opportunities (heaven) and circumstances (earth), the decisions and actions (man) that lead to the end points are drastically different.

So while we can expect to hit opportunities and blockages like clockwork (fate, heaven), given a set of circumstances (earth), life is what we choose make of it (destiny, man) - we are the product of every decision we have made after all. Our decisions and actions can change our circumstances that opens more and better opportunities or allows us to better plan for challenges ahead.  These decisions are driven by everything that makes us unique, even identical twins - our needs and wants, the environment, people, health, weather, etc.

In TCM, knowing the pattern and the factors that affect it helps to map out prognosis. Each pattern in TCM has certain manifestations and once identified these patterns can be worked and unraveled. While a certain population may suffer migraines, some of these individuals will do the work to address the pattern and improve their lives, it doesn't have to be TCM, but TCM can help identify which lifestyle factors exacerbate or alleviate the pattern.