There are many arguments about whether we have free will at all. Some atheistic determinists believe that there is no free will at all. Others only believe in free will because the Bible said we have free will, but usually lean more to God is making the choices "Let go and let God". It is all a tangled mess.
And it is more of a mess because people have an idea about reality that isn't real at all. And you can't blame em, because there is a group of people who know, and don't want the public to know. Hollywood movie producers make movies that reinforces a false view of reality. The science that put on the TV is also to reinforce that false view.
This group wants to make sure you never understand how powerful you are. They want you feeling powerless. Like, "you aren't really in control of your life", "you are just a meat robot", "you are spec, on a spec, rotating around a star on a forgettable edge of a galaxy."
So, lets discuss reality
This is the hard one. Because humans are programmed, hard wired into your brain, to see time as linear. We see the past as real and future as just a probability. It is ok to see things this way, because it is how we set up this world so that we could witness how we create our future.
But, it isn't really real.
Our universe is created and destructed trillions of times per second. Our lives are like a film reel. A bunch of still images, that only by experiencing one after the other, rapidly, do we see movement. Further, just like the film reel, our entire life is there to be viewed. All of our past, and all of our future.
Many people reading these words would automatically jump to, "He just proved that there is no free will". "Your whole life is there, so nothing can change"
We need to look at time differently. There is no past, there is no future. There is only the NOW.
And every now, comes complete with a past and a future. So, you could say that an entire film reel is created every second of your life.
Before your life, your life is planned out by YOU.
YOU chose your parents. With your parents "in the room with you". YOU chose how your life would be set up. What kind of parents they would be. Would you have a normal childhood, or be shaped by neglect or child abuse? (Yes, YOU, the large you, not in corporeal form, chose all these pieces to learn the life lessons you chose. There are many super-powers you can get if you live through childhood abuse, and heal it.)
YOU chose the major people in your life. All your friends were chosen (with their approval) by YOU. Those fated meetings were planned. Not planned in the specific, frame by frame happening that you experienced, but there was an energy, a template put over you, that guided the two of you to meet. A feeling of "you should get to know this person". And large parts of your life will be orchestrated so that you meet again, if the first meeting didn't work out. This is why many people describe a meeting as fate.
You are in the driver's seat and you can choose not to interact with this other person. However, know that this meeting was planned by YOU and them. So, basically, you are saying no to your old friend. But, we also choose the "bad guys" in our lives. (Its like playing cops and robbers with your friend.) So, if you have worked through the lessons in your life, and are way ahead of schedule, you may be saying no to a "bad guy" entering your life. (Most people cannot get to this level, even if i told them all that would happen. And, if you are at that level, you may find yourself enjoying the "cops and robbers")
Now, for the real mind melting stuff.
In that last interaction description, lets say you were advanced on you life lesson plan enough, that you could recognize, and choose consciously, to deal or not deal with the "bad guy" that just "fated" into your life. What you will probably choose is BOTH choices. One of you will say no, and the other one of you will say yes. At that moment you will have two futures. After that moment, you will have two entirely separate lives. Going at the same time.
This universe is designed to play out ALL the options. It is hard to discuss what this universe is trying to find, and we will only know when we have found it. So, WE will try every option that we feel will lead to knew and novel endings.
There are many options that WE know how will end, and so they aren't explored. (think of all the choices you don't even engage with. The next time you are trying to decide between A and B, and look at why C, D, E… aren't even thought of as possibilities) Like, Schroedinger's Cat experiment. People accept the end states cat dead and cat alive. But there are other states that we don't consider because "reality". Like the cat not being in the box, but most scientists will explain this as "they just didn't notice the cat jumping out of the box as they grabbed the lid". But, seriously, there are many possibilities that we will just assume was a mistake. The radioactive material is missing. The poison wasn't really poison. The entire experiment fell off the table. But, but, there are more possibilities that we just ignore, like: The cat is both dead and alive. Sometimes you pour food in his bowl, and he comes, and other times he doesn't exist. Or, instead of the cat dying or not, the scientists die or not.
AND there are so many places in there where the scientist can choose BOTH, and in one timeline the scientist is very sad for what they did. And another where they scientist is glad that they chose to not even try the experiment and smuggled the kitty out.
This is just how the universe works. You can become aware of it. You can even learn to talk with yourselves that "chose" differently.
So, you have free will. It is just that we (humans) tend to view the "choice point" incorrectly. Like, the choice to meet "this" person was chosen long before you were born. Or that it was not just a simple cause and effect. That there were many layers involved in that cause and effect. Or that we don't consider the emotions has part of the cause and effect, although they are often MUCH MORE important to how things turnout. "But that's unscientific!" people shout. Universe doesn't care about your science.
If you comprehend how the universe really works, you can start steering your life to better (for you) outcomes. If you figure out what your life lessons are, than you can stop resisting them, and try to look for easy/fun ways to learn them.
If you learn to feel which choices are meaningless to your life path, and which are more important, you can be more aware of your free will. And you can be more aware of what is really the cause of the effect. (and then you also find out that the scientific ideas of probability and random chance are all bunk.)
You know, that when life sends you for a loop-d-loop, that the start of that was when you chose to ride the roller-coaster. It was not the sudden drop after the seemingly peaceful part of your life, that was the cause. Those parts were just inevitable after you stepped onto the roller-coaster.
So, learn to feel the life choice points, and choose with a broader feel about what you would like your life to be like. Then you will feel like you have a little more control in your life.
