The Cogs of Fate

If fate is a wheel, then we are the sand that is crushed between the cogs. we are helpless, all we want is power, even if we can't protect others by extending our hands, we desire a blade for those hands to grasp, the power to crush one's fate must look like a blade swinging down.

Is my power the power to crush fate?

Are we governed by fate? Do we have the power to change or prevent fate?

Can a man change his stars? They say a man's destiny is chosen the day he's born on earth, does that mean we're pre-designed and we have no control over our lives?

One would argue that we do have control over our life (at least the daily to daily activities), but do we really have control over it or is it man's vanity and ego that convince him that he's in control and that he has a "Will"?

"Fate" is the opposite of "Free Will" does that mean we can't have one if we have the other? Or is there a thin line in between the two?

Religion teaches us that man has a free will, in the sense that we are free to choose between good and evil and pick our path between them, it also teaches that "God's Will" is over "Man's Will" and that we have no power to do anything except if it agrees with God's will. I fail to see through this contradiction and can't help but to wonder where exactly is man's free will?

If we take "The Matrix" as an analogy, was Neo free to take the red pill or was he fated to do so? Did he pick it with his own "Free Will" or was he "Fated" to take it by a higher power? Where lies the line between man's will and God's will?

It amazes me how man claims that he's "in control", we're so imperfect and helpless in almost everything. Man can't control fate, nor death, nor disease, and can hardly survives nature.

Man is like the sand that is crushed by the wheels of a cog, driven by unseen hands for a reason unknown for all eternity, or is it?