Ted from Australia Asks: "Do You Believe In Destiny Or Fate?"

Have you ever found yourself standing still in a moment, trying to retrace the footsteps in your mind in a curious attempt to find your way to the precise point in time when something must have happened that would become the catalyst for your present moment? Did you follow that? Maybe Ted from Australia put it more succinctly when he sent in this month’s question, “Do you believe in destiny or fate?”

Paul: Thanks for your question, Ted. I believe in a mixture of fate, destiny, luck, magic and hard work! And the reason is that so many things have happened to me that are not easy to explain. For instance, the fact I dreamed the melody to my song ‘Yesterday’. I woke up one morning and remembered this dream and this beautiful tune was playing. And I thought, ‘I love that tune’. And I couldn’t think what it was but I happen to have a piano by my bedside. So I sort of laid it out and to help remember it. I would ask people for the next few weeks, ‘What’s this? Have you heard this?’ First of all, John would say ‘I dunno’. And George Martin would say, ‘I don’t know’. And I asked various people who I thought might know. So after a couple of weeks, they said, ‘It's yours! You've written it!’ And I didn't write it. I woke up and it was in my head. So, you know, I see that as what I said in the opening sentence of the answer: it’s luck, it’s fate, it's destiny, it's magic and somewhere there's hard work. But, in that instance, I don't know where!

PM.com: Well, you wouldn't have been able to get pen to paper if you didn't do the hard work!

Paul: Well, I did have to record it and make more of it so... But yeah, those kinds of things happen to me a lot. I often think 'How did The Beatles get together?' Four guys that lived in a city in the north of England, but didn't know each other at first. And then gradually, bit by bit, they got to know each other. And then they happened to be good playing together. And then they happened to have the will and the… Well, you know, all the things that it needed to make it into something huge!

PM.com: Do you ever think: If I hadn't been in that place and at that time then perhaps this wouldn't have happened? Do you believe you would have got there anyway? Or in a different way?

Paul: I don't know, and that's the mystery! Would it have happened in another way? I happen to have a very good friend at school, one of my best friends at school who knew John. So he introduced us. But if I didn't happen to know my best friend, I wouldn't have known John. I had a bus route that George also shared. So if I hadn't had gotten that bus route, or he happened to not live nearby and taken that bus route... So there are all these small things that had to happen to make it happen. So it's nice and I think that there is some kind of magic!

Do you believe in fate / destiny / magic? Let us know in the comments below...