The choices we make affect our future. Too many people think that believing in fate means that your future is something you do not control. Even if fate is the power behind the universe, we still walk the pathes it laid for us. Though fate doesn't necessarily make sense, when you think about it. What is fate? Some god? Is it an existence? If it isn't, what is it? Oh it's the theory that all of life is pre-determined... okay, predetermined by what? Where is this information stored? Is there some universal databank where all information of everything is stored from the beginning to the end of time, that of which there is no beginning nor no end, which would make it an infinite database, unless there is an end, but if there's an end there is also a beginning, a beginning created from nothing. Theoretically we shouldn't even exist. (Don't want to delve further into that though...)

Anyway if fate is the governing power around us, and all the choices we make are an illusion of free will, something comes to mind. "An illusion is reality from the person experiencing it" Shion said something like that in Xenosaga, and it's something to think about if you think we are living an illusion.

I agree with whoever said that the author of this topic is thinking too much into it, and also with the person who said Neji wasn't referring to free-will versus fate, but a system of social classes in which he was born a winner/genius and Naruto was born a loser/drop out and there was no way he could change that.