Here is my take on free will. I hope I can explain it well enough that people understand.

For a long time I have not seen the contradiction between a single fixed future and free will.

The universe is four-dimensional, time being a dimension (though a very different kind of dimension from space).

The future only unfolds in one way. Each decision you make leads to one future, it does not split the universe into multiple futures. You can only choose one future. Therefore only one timeline exists, the one that we all travel on into the shared future that we all experience.

But we all have free will. We all make decisions that affect the present and those affects determine the future.

Some people take the logical step that if the universe must unfold in the one fated way, then we do not have the freedom to take a different path.

But this is incorrect. We do have the freedom to take a different path. We just don't do it. Because of who we are.

Fate isn't something outside of you that you are a slave to with no free will. YOU are the fate that is making the one true future. Or rather, you are a part of that fate, and you have perfectly free will.