I almost blamed destiny again.
It was after sahur. The house was quiet in that strange way early mornings usually are during Ramadan. The kind of quiet that makes every small sound feel louder than it actually is. The clink of a spoon. The hum of the refrigerator. The soft glow of a phone screen in the dark.
I had just finished eating, and my plan was simple. Take a short nap before starting work. Sleep was already approaching. You know that feeling when your body slowly surrenders to the mattress, your mind drifting somewhere between consciousness and dreams.
And then a thought interrupted everything.
One of those annoying thoughts that refuses to let you sleep.
Why did that thing fail?
Not loudly. Just quietly sitting there in my head.
Now, if you are like most people, you probably know the next step in this mental drama. You start looking for someone to blame. Maybe the timing was wrong. Maybe someone sabotaged you. Maybe destiny just decided to write a different story for your life.
And if you are feeling particularly spiritual, you might say something like, “Maybe God didn’t want it for me.”
Convenient explanation. Very comforting. Zero responsibility.
But over the past few years, I started doing something dangerous. I started asking myself an uncomfortable question after every disappointment: “What exactly happened here?”
Not the version I tell friends. Not the version I post online. The real version.
And almost every time, I discovered something irritating. A large part of the outcome was quietly shaped by my own decisions.
Let me give you an example.
Imagine someone who constantly complains about being broke. Every month they make decent money, but somehow the money disappears faster than water poured on sand. Random online shopping. Unplanned spending. Food delivery three times a week. Subscriptions they forgot even existed.
Then one day they look at their empty bank account and sigh dramatically.
“Maybe wealth is not written for me.”
But was it really destiny?
Or was it simply a long list of small decisions quietly doing their job?
Life often works like this. Not through dramatic turning points, but through tiny choices repeated over and over again. The decision to wake up or hit snooze. The decision to prepare or procrastinate. The decision to improve or remain comfortable.
None of these moments feel important when they happen. But over time they stack together like bricks, and eventually you wake up one day living inside the house those bricks built.
Now from a religious perspective, this conversation becomes even more interesting. Many people believe God controls everything, and in many ways that is true. God created us. God created the world we live in. God allows events to unfold in ways we sometimes cannot understand.
But there is something else God also gave us.
Free will.
The ability to decide. The ability to act. The ability to shape the direction of our lives.
Think of it like this. Maybe ten percent of life is unexpected. Luck. Chance. Opportunities that appear out of nowhere. But the other ninety percent is quietly shaped by the decisions we make every single day.
And that realization can be uncomfortable. Because it means the situation we are in today may not be entirely written by destiny. Sometimes it was written slowly by our own habits, our own laziness, and our own choices.
But here is the good news.
If your decisions helped create your current situation, new decisions can create a different future.
And sometimes the first step toward changing your life happens at a very strange time. Right after sahur, when the world is quiet, your eyes are heavy, and a single honest thought refuses to let you sleep.