One thing to notice around here is that you need some kind of an external stimulant to do things (anything). Like you need enough coffee to be in a mood for writing something, or enough psyco stimulants to create something awesome like an immortal piece of music, or a motivational source in some form to help you achieve something great(relative). The point is that whatever is happening in this world, everything that we do, and we observe happening arounnd is happening under the influence of something else. It can be taken as a chain reaction which started at some time way back in this universe, a fancy name can be given to that time - The Big Bang.
The big bang can be taken as the begining of a tree with two branches, which further divide into two more, and on and on with time. Here we have taken just two conditions turning into two different conditions and so on to make it simple to understand, but it could very well have been 3 or 923382 or anything else. And to make it simpler we assume that time goes linearly up from the big bang, and the conditions turn in other conditions only after a year, so, after 1 year there will be 4 contitions, 10 years 1024 conditions, 100 years 1267650600228229401496703205376 conditions, and we can see how fast the tree grows. We are around 13.75 billion years into the future from the big bang so we can try to imagine the immensity of the number 2 multiplied 13.75 billion times to itself, and I am sure it is beyond our imagination (at least mine) to justify the monsterousness of this number. So, this simple model shows that how things can grow from something tiny very fast(relative, as we have the whole time in this universe).
So, looking at the prevelent theory which says that there were some quantum fluctuations in the early universe, which caused an explosive(as from 0 to the whole volume of the universe we live in) inflation of space-time for almost 380 thousand years, and the formation of first stars around 400 million years, and to the current state around 13.5 billion years from the big bang, we can comprehend that just a small number of fluctuations, which can give rise to other conditions, would have been sufficient to create the universe as we see now.
Now, we consider the universe to be a closed and isolated system, which means that what happens in the universe stays in the universe, and whatever happens outside the universe stays outside. And as the universe is governed by a set of physical laws, we can say that the universe is a deterministic system, which means that given some initial conditions we can predict what is going to happen after a certain time. So, we see that if the universe is an isolated and deterministic system, whatever happens in the universe only depends on the initial condition of the universe at the time of the big bang. If we know what were the intial conditions and the fluctuations without any uncertainity (which is not allowed by Heizenberg), we can calculate what exactly is going to happen at a given space-time coordinate. Or in other words, everything that is happening is happening due to what happend at the initial moment, at the big bang. Which means that we have no control over what we do or what we don't, our destiny is written in the initial conditions of the universe.
And on the other hand, if we take the condition that we have total, or even partial, control over our lives it breaks the above theory. Which means that the universe is not deterministic, and there is some external influence or an influx and outflux of energy to and from somewhere else, respectively. This source or sink can very well be called luck, God, Devil or toilet, anything you like. But it must exist if you have any control over your actions, which we very much feel like we do.
As a Science student you are not expected to believe this, but I believe that any of these theories can be true. I mean that, either of 'The bief history of time' , 'The Bible' and 'Harry Potter' can be true. Who knows? The universe as we know right now may have been created by some-I-don't-know-thing, in a petridish for an experiment, just a second ago, by feeding all the energy, the information, everything, and then pressing the play button. Who knows?
All we can do is wonder.
Am I in the Matrix?
Moreover, who cares?
well, some people do.
Peace.
