It’s a scapegoat used by scoundrels to assuage their guilt and escape accountability for their behavior. “It was fate, it was destiny, it was going to happen anyway, nothing can be done about it, so no reason to feel bad.”
It’s real; I’d describe it as a series of fixed points in time, though how you get there is up to you. Like the same destination but the roads you take are your decision. You can even change it if you try hard enough, but there’s inertia there; you have to really want it and swim against the current. I don’t recommend making changes “too often” though.
Imagine a ball rolling down the hill. You can run down the hill to stop it by hand, or throw a rock with good aim to knock it off course. But by default the ball will end up exactly where it was always meant to be.
A future leader of humanity will have said once:
No fate but what we make for ourselves.
Can be a fun trope in fiction. Doesn’t exist IRL, which is a good thing.
sadly lots of folks can’t distinguish between reality and fiction, more and more each day it seems.
It is a heap of horseshit that people make up to comfort themselves.
Like potential it doesn’t mean a damn thing.
don’t believe in it any more than ghosts, god, or goblins.
it’s something irresponsible people need to believe in because that way they don’t have to take blame for their own choices.
you will notice the types of folks who believe in this stuff tend have life histories of responsibility avoidance.