"There are so many dreams to be fulfilled, but Ultima says a man's destiny must unfold itself like a flower, with only the sun and the earth and water making it blossom, and no one else meddling in it-" (p. 223).

When I was in Msr. Matus’ sophomore English class, I couldn't make up my mind about the idiosyncrasies of William Shakespeare's “Macbeth”. For a long while, I was convinced that The moral of the story was as Ultima said, “a man’s destiny must unfold itself...no one else meddling in it”. Or more simply put, what will be will be. However, after finishing the book and analyzing it I realized that although that is the theme, the plot is more complex than “trust the process”. Macbeth calls another layer of this lesson into question. The point of the book isn’t to warn against others “meddling” in your destiny, but rather to prevent oneself from doing said “meddling”. 

Macbeth makes the Whiches prophesies become reality, he takes all the actions to fulfill the prophesies because he heard of the outcome. I would argue that, if the witches hadn't stopped Macbeth he wouldn’t have killed the king or Banquo. 

He meddled with his own destiny. So, I find myself disagreeing ever so slightly with the wise Ultima. The entire flower metaphor puts my thoughts on destiny into words better than I could. However, as soon as she warns against others altering one’s destiny, we reach a discrepancy. I would take it one step further and claim that you also must protect your destiny from yourself.

 We all manifest what we believe we want, but we often don't really know what those wants entail. The same way that I don't know what's good for anyone else, I don't really know what's good for me either. Only time does, and time has a way of putting us where we need to be. Well... that's if you beleive in destiny, which in itself is an entirely different topic.