So there I was...

Me: A serious question: Do you believe in destiny?  Fate?  Or just something that YOU are meant to do or become?  Let’s hear it!

Her: I still battle with this…But believing in destiny is absolutely just as irrational from an intellectual point of view as believing in God or in anything outside what you can physically see or experience. But if I didn't believe in either of those things, I would have to believe that my life were an arbitrary/coincidental/accidental occurrence. And I can't imagine why I would have my personality and my soul and my way of thinking if it weren't in order to fill some role that I am meant to. It's sort of like that Einstein quote about there being two ways to view the world: as if everything is a miracle, or as though nothing is. I don't know for sure, Ryan, but I am willing to bet on the first. Your turn! What do you think about all of that?

Me:  I differ on the perspective that it has to be either of two ways.  You, and many other minions, refer to the fallacy that something is irrational because it is not tangible.  Ask yourself anthropologist Jr., is it really irrational if human beings all around the world share the common notion that there is something bigger and more sacred than themselves?  That there are places where our ancestors and loved ones go?  Is that ignorant and irrational if there perhaps is a complex in our brain that wires us to imagine such a thing?  I think even atheists want to believe in something, they just need more proof.  I do not think that everything happens for a reason, but I feel that there are currents and flows that lead in a deterministic kind of way.  I don't know if we have destinies, and I'm glad that I don't know; it leaves more room for free will, but at the same time encourages the fact that we may have the ability to be parts of something significant.  And I think that is what humans want.  We want our lives to be significant...that our struggles, works, and experiences matter...to know we left a mark.  This ties back into the belief in something that you can't see, because since most of us are unsure that we are significant while we are living on earth, we hope that there is something beyond us that will resonate and give us the ability to look back and see that we did matter.  

Her: Wouldn't it be sort of nicer if everything were already set in some semblance of a plan? I'm on a date with Library, and this existential crisis is distracting me. 

I can most certainly see "destiny" from your perspective. Especially in terms of the idea of deterministic currents and flows... I don't mean to say that I think every little thing in my life is laid out in some master plan. Of course I can choose what I do on a day-to-day basis... but there's so much we don't have control over. Like, for example, the fact that we exist in the first place. I didn't choose to be here, and no one even told me why I am! But that doesn't change the fact that I am. So that tells me that I'm not the one calling the shots on a the most fundamental level. Which is in large part why I believe in God.
I don't disagree with you that it is part of the human ego to want to be significant and to feel the need to invent the notion of a "purpose" in life. However, in terms of our individual personalities and roles in the lives of others... I feel like everyone in my life has taught me specific things at specific times...  of course that could just be in retrospect that I can assign a role to all of them. But at the very least I think we choose our paths and tend to gravitate toward people on similar paths.  

Also, in nature there is order. Everything is logical and symbiotic on some scale, but sometimes it takes a microscope or an aerial view to see the way things fit together. We're just not able to see exactly how we fit into the grand scheme of things... and therein lies the futile quest to understand it all.
I think the reason I'm a pretty happy person is that on the whole, I think that what we do in life isn't nearly as important as how we do those things. So I try and make my "purpose" to live gratefully and be as kind to others as I can. And that's enough for me. 

Me: Everything you said is wrong.

Her: You just made me laugh out loud on my "date" and now some Asians are staring at me. 

Me: I like the way you think...yet you ran laps around my question without answering it. Do you believe that a person is meant for something or no? A destiny? I like your moral take, but are we just shaped by our experiences in our lives for anything? Or something in particular?

Her: To answer your question, I think we are meant to be the sort of people that we are, and then we decide what to do with that. And that's where a purpose comes along. I suppose that we decide whether to really make use of our lives or not. But the anthropologist in me wonders, would I be saying any of this if I were one of the first Homo sapiens just trying to survive and not get eaten by a lion? Probably not. But then again, life was simpler back then in the good old days.