The question of free will or determinism and fate is often highly debated. One can make this question impossible to answer simply by removing the continuum and demanding an either/or of mutually exclusive free will or determinism. But without this assumption of mutual exclusiveness the question becomes a rather simple observation: When we think of the whole as a complex organism and of ourselves as a cell within, then it is fairly obvious that we as the cell at the same time influence our environment and are influenced by it.
From the perspective of the cell, there is no 100% control or knowledge over the whole organism, but neither do the OTHER parts of the organism, i.e. the environment, have 100% control over the cell, for the cell itself is an acting happening like all the other cells.

However here is the curious thing: When you take the cell and the environment together as a union, as the whole organism, then this organism as one being, then there is no external environment left to be influenced by and thus there is total “free will” (by definition of free will as the absence of external influences, i.e. the patterns of the whole can unfold without external intervention. please note that it would be absurd to think of the whole universe in terms of a single human being. in the case of the universe the “will” basically are the patterns of nature. the patterns of humans are just a small subset of the possible expressions of the patterns of nature). Surely enough, this total free will is also total boredom, for you have total knowledge and can’t be surprised. So one could say, the universe as a whole unity folds itself in many parts which are always connected but have limited perspective, so that the universe as a whole may surprise itself and explore its own diversity from these manifold perspectives.

Animals like us who often think in boxes often find ourselves in dangerously sharp definitions of our selves. Some people define themselves merely by their name, a few attributes of “character” which they believe to be written in stone, a banc account and a license plate. And from this definition, from this perspective of self, people surely feel like they have not much of a free will, for by definition they are almost nothing and mostly feel pushed around by an “external world”. But really, if you really try hard to define yourself, you will not be able to: You will merely jump from one association to the next indefinitely. This is because you and the environment go together as one.

So the thing is, depending on how broadly we define ourselves, depending on where we draw the line between us and the external world, we can have both total free will (when all happening is seen as self and there is nothing external to push us around), or no free will at all (when we define ourselves as nothing and are only pushed around by the allmighty external world). It is obvious, that both extremes are not very fruitful: When you think you are god all the time, you will be totally bored. And when you think almighty god pushes you around all the time, life will be terrible as it was in the ages of religious dictatorship.
Thus the best solution is to abolish the idea of god and embrace a worldview more in coherence with the sciences: The worldview of us as cells of an organims, where we are both actor and acted upon. Where life flourishes in diversity in the lands between the extremes of total free will or determinism.

Now i wish to leave one more thing: We in the perspective of cells can not have free will, if we do not trust the external world. Because if we are constantly afraid that the atoms may not hold us up, or that the heart may stop beating anytime, then we would always waste our time on a predetermined worrying that leaves no space for diversity. For us animals who reflect so much on so many things, and especially who we live in societies of hyperindividualism, it can happen quickly that our definition of self becomes narrow and our mental ties and our trust to the external world erode. And as already mentioned with this trust we loose our capacity to worrying. Thus for us animals who reflect so much it is important to at times take our time to realize and to foster this intuitive feeling, that “You’re breathing. The wind is blowing. The trees are waving. Your nerves are tingling.”—all go together as one, and that truly you can let the external world take over you, so that you see yourself in the deep fundamental perspective of you the universe, which you always are underneath the manifold diversity of cellular perspective. And this realization of unity will allow you to trust the external world as kin, so that you as the universe who are bored by total control will be happy to take on the perspective of you as the cell, without feeling limited by the knowledge that your influence is limited.
Total free will is not something you want as the universe, because there would be nothing that could suprise you. But you as the cell sometimes need to merge with the whole and be taken in by darkness, by the external world, so that you can relax in the realization that what you really are is the whole of all happening, and regain your trust in unity, so that with this trust you will eventually want to be part of diversity again. And so inseparably connected the universe explores itself from manifold perspectives.

To summarize for intuition: We are mutually influencing cells of an organism, of a big soup of happening. And this is great, we can only influence a bit but we trust the external world and feel that we have sufficient influence to be happy (this is the human experience of “free will”), unless we start worrying that the rest of the soup is somehow evil or bad or separate from us, then we wont be able to be diversity (and we feel “determined” and “driven”). Whether we trust the world (which from our current form we perceive as “external”) depends on how much of the connections we see, and on how we define our “self”. Like an apple on a tree, like a wave in the ocean, we are also an expression of the patternings of nature. We can identify a thought in our brain as an expression of “us” without even knowing what “us” is. And when we try to honestly find out what we are (without just taking the first arbitrary adjectives and associations that come to our mind to define ourself in an arbitrary self concept) by following the connections among our body to see how they go together, we inevitably end up in the connections of the whole universe, for our body is not a separate thing. And only if we see that all happening goes together as one, only if we can see ourselves as an aspect of nature, just like we see some bacteria inside our body as an aspect of “us”, then we are not afraid of nature and of the external world, on a fundamental level.