In a lesser-known Indy film called Ink, we see how a dream-world being who is able to set events into motion to enact subtle changes on reality starts a chain of events that begin with a five dollar donation to a street musician being blown away by a gust of wind and ends with a car accident that sends the estranged father of a young girl to the hospital in which she lies dying of a mysterious condition so that he can save her life. (If you haven't seen Ink, watch it. It's amazing.)
In Field of Dreams, we follow Ray Kinsella's efforts to unravel the mysteries of Shoeless Joe Jackson, Terrence Mann and Doc "Midnight" Graham as he follows the instructions of a voice that he believes wants him to build a baseball field. What is starting to unfold into a epic tale of determination and self-discovery comes to a spectacularly satisfying moment when Midnight Graham - who Ray feared might have regretted leaving Baseball for medicine - steps across the chalk line of the field to rescue Ray's young daughter from choking, changing from the young player to the old doctor immediately as he does so. If that's not enough, as the players are leaving the field, the last to pack up turns out to be Ray's father, and he gets to have a game of catch with him after all these years, finally fulfilling the promise whispered to him in the field that "if you build it, he will come".
Come to think of it, Kevin Costner stars in a number of movies in which the main character realizes an unexpected destiny: In Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, he arrives home to England believing his only goal is to escape captivity during the crusades, but is met with the rule of the king's brother Prince John, and finds himself wrapped up in the efforts of the Merry Men to thwart the Sheriff of Nottingham's local brutal control of the local lands. In The Postman, he plays a post-apocalyptic wanderer who stumbles across a bag of mail that is many years old, and uses it in a ruse to get into a local town for food and shelter as a "postman" in a "revived US postal system", only to become a true inspiration for a group that builds a network of communication and fights back against a tyrannical gang that has been terrorizing the lawless area.
And then there is, of course, one of the most well-known stories of an epic adventure in order to come to one small realization: The Wizard of Oz, in which Dorothy goes on a journey down the yellow brick road, meets three friends along the way, and saves the land of Oz from the wicked witch (see, I told you there were spoilers). This all happens before arriving at the Wizard's castle to ask for advice on returning home, only to learn that she had the power to travel back home using her ruby slippers all this time. The journey was the story all along.
Whether showing us how a complex series of events can lead to one crucial moment, persuading us that our actions - no matter how small - have true meaning, or just entertaining us with the fantastic hypotheticals of time travel and the web of consequences that it might weave, Destiny - whether it is as simple as a cute story of Serendipity bringing two lovers together after years of yearning, or an epic tale of Harry Potter's coming of age to defeat the evil Wizard who made him into the prophesized savior he was by killing his parents in the first place - clearly plays an important role in the stories we tell. Maybe that's why we take such a keen interest in time travel in particular. Not only does the prospect of being able to see or even influence the past appeal to us, but perhaps it acts as a vehicle for examining our notions of fate, destiny and the role - if any - of free will in our own lives.