Trying to make sense of random arguments

Fortunately, last night i had a fight (again!) with one of my close friends. It being an argument between two lawyers, soon became a battle of egos - with each not wanting to acknowledge merit in the other's reasoning. It ended in a fight (yet again) without a conclusion.

i dedicate this post to our fight - since it gave me a topic for my post.

The fight was about theorising 'Destiny'. And this post is meant to gain some clarity of what we were fighting about. And also to know what others think.

My friend supports the theory that every individual is 'micro-managed' i.e., what an individual would do in each micro second, minute, hour, day, week, month and year of his life is pre-destined or pre-managed. If a thing were to happen in a person's life, it shall happen. An event will happen, at its predestined time. Before its time, no effort to make a thing happen shall fructify. Destiny will guide a person when to act. If a person has taken a step or a decision at any given time, it is because destiny dictated him to.

i think that if my friend's theory of destiny were true, then we would be mere puppets in the hands of an unidentified manipulator and there would be little or rather, no credit to be ascribed to the individual for his/her successes or failures. i would rather believe that each individual is pre-programmed only to the extent that he/she is born with certain potentials or tendencies which set the person to a particular course. However the credit for the person's achievements or failures goes to his environment and his actions.

Why then do we often make statements like - it was not destined to be , or, he/she was destined to rule. Why despite best efforts do we sometimes not get desired results and at other times, when we are least expecting, we are put on a course we may have desired but not really strived for. I do not know do you?