Okay, so these random thoughts have been coming to my head for some time now as I try to make sense of my life. I wanted to ask GSers what they thought.
When I was younger I rejected the very idea of kismet(destiny) playing a role in a person’s life. I thought we were the masters of our own fate and as long as my life decisions were sensible and ethical things would eventually work out. However, that did not happen.
Slowly, over the years I have resigned myself to the fact that there is very little in my life that is in my control, life will keep throwing curve balls and all that is in my control is how I deal with them and even if I played one inning well doesn’t mean from then on my life is going to be easy or good. Life is a CONSTANT STRUGGLE and there will always be things, major things in life that will be out of my sphere of control.How significantly these ‘beyond your control factors’ impact your life is maybe what will call ‘kismet’. If you do not believe in kismet you can stop reading any further 
As a girl, growing up Pakistan, I was used to hearing things like , ‘kismet burri thi, shaadi ke baad itnay burray susral walay milay’ and ‘bahut kismet wali he, itna acha husband mila he’ etc etc. so normally in the desi culture kismet is thought to come into play only after Shaadi. However, I have observed there are girls who were ignored, less favourite daughters of their parents before marriage and things did not turn out well for them after marriage either. Infact, if I look around me all the divorced girls I know were always the less ladli or less important child despite the fact that all of them are good, obedient daughters who love and actively take care of their parents and have done nothing to earn the position of the least favourite child.
That made me think that maybe their is a connection, your life pre marriage is a reflection of how things will be for you after marriage? If you are destined by Allah to have a difficult life generally then maybe that starts from the time you are born and continues throughout your life? Or maybe the reason of less than happy married life is because you were the ignored child, your parents did not put much effort into the rishta screening process nor were they very supportive during the initial bumpy years of marriage or when things turned tumultuous leaving you on your own during the whole journey?
Case in point, a friend of mine who is now divorced tells me her brother her has been favoured over her all her life. When time came for her parents did marry her to what looked like a good man but no effort was done to do background checks, her marriage preps and functions were treated as very trivial matters. It was exactly the opposite for her brother’s wedding some years back when everything from her bhabi’s suits to choosing wedding invitations were treated as paramount issues. The same distinction continued when problems arose in their marriages, to hers the parents had an indifferent attitude leaving her to make the decisions , with her brother they actively engaged to prevent solve issues. She ended up divorced and now gets to hear things like ‘bus kismet achi nahein nikli’ from aunties. I was wondering if she has been treated differently from her childhood and her parents had taken more than a casual interest in her life maybe ‘uski kismet achi nikal aati’. Knowing that your parents have your back gives you a whole lot of strength and an entirely new perspective to deal with life’s problems.
I know of other cases like these too, so maybe I was thinking what we call kismet and what we generally hold Allah responsible for when things go bad are really little contributions to our lives from people around us and put together over the years they determine how happy or difficult our life is.
Thoughts?