Quote Originally Posted by Curious George
That leads me nicely into Carl Jung's concept of Synchronicity, put simply, sometimes there are meaningful coincidences in time and space. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity However we then have a choice in how we react to that occurence. In this way, things may look like "fate" but it doesn't mean our lives are laid down in somekind of astral roadmap. Looked at another way: we see a leaf on a tree, we know it will fall downwards at some point, but the time and manner in which this will happen will be affected by the environmental variables at that point in time, eg if it's windy it may go up before it comes down which would seem entirely contradictory to the laws of the universe if we applied the analogy to another situation
Outstanding Curious George, I was just about to go the same route
when I saw your post.

Life is action and reaction and that is many times thought
of as fate by some.

Much of life is perception and Jung sets an exceptional example
of that.

Free will determines what the end result in the grand scheme
of things will be.