Life path

I am currently reading “The Time Traveler’s Wife”. Yesterday I was excited when I found out that the female character Clare shares my birthday. She was born five years before me. I am now at the part where she is about to describe her 21st birthday- the day she is engaged. It was a Sunday; the very Sunday I had my sweet 16 brunch, which was not so sweet. This has me thinking about life path, fate, and destiny; how much freedom do we really have in deciding what path our life takes. Now I am thinking about how many other ways I could have spent that Sunday to have a great memory like did had on her 21st birthday. My 21st was not that great either, I was living as a poor college student in Michigan at the time, and coincidentally that is where the Clare grew up.