Events clearly unfolded as a result of their personalities, and personal history at that point.
Now, consider a different sort of moment. Two people, old friends in new clothes, are out stirring up trouble, and documenting their exploration of a new place, when one of them runs into a third individual known to them headed towards soirée. The pair tag along and find themselves someplace completely new, surrounded by strangers in a strange place.
What happens next? Is it a matter of cosmic alignment, or is it, like the parallel ink just a coincidence?
To attempt at answering this question would be an exercise in futility, egotism and even heresy. However, we can still make progress by reducing the problem into it's relevance, importance, and meaning.
Case 1) Observer theory: The assumption is that only one or the other can be true.
Either we decide our own present events for ourselves, able to change our minds right down to the salient event; The moment that time "moves forward" in the mind of all the observer.
Else-wise, every moment, every event is written into Time, determined by the series of events and choices leading up to the point where it feels to us as if we have the choice in the present. History appears to us as if we said the words, but the words were already spoken.
Time is written in our memories, and in our art. It's every vibration and written into every precious stone on Earth. But is it written before it happens?
Case 2) Ghost in the machine: That both are true
The future happens. The present is predestined not by the infinite factors of reality, but by the people in it.
Case 3) Some third option.
Such as M theory. That every possibility that can happen, does happen. This means that within the confines of Natural Law, there is no choosing, only possibilities. The Universe was born not a a particular moment in time, or in space, but It was born out of a higher "possibility space" where perhaps "nothing" "happened" for a "long time". Then suddenly something did happen, and that something we call home. It's mostly empty, so vast as to be beyond imagination, but still remains incredibly interesting and detailed down to the smallest scale. The Universe balanced; sometimes stable, relatively predictable, other times mysterious, chaotic and dangerous. Life is a microcosm for reality. Whatever laws govern matter, must also determine a great deal about what life seems like for those living it here. And that means you and me.
