The Yoruba account of ori, a soul choosing its own destiny before birth and then forgetting the choice, has a structural parallel remarkable enough to be regularly noted in comparative mythology: the Myth of Er that closes Plato's Republic, composed in an entirely separate tradition with no plausible historical contact.
In Plato's myth, souls awaiting rebirth are brought before a selection of possible lives, arranged by lot as to order but with the choice left free, and each soul selects the pattern of life it will lead before a guardian spirit (daimon) escorts it to birth; before entering the body each soul drinks from the River of Forgetfulness (Lethe) and forgets the choice entirely, so a person lives out a fate they themselves selected without memory of selecting it, precisely the structure Yoruba tradition attributes to ori. Plato uses the myth to argue a person is responsible for the quality of the life they chose, since the fault, as the myth's presiding figure states, lies with the chooser and not God, a conclusion close to the one the main entry draws from ori's forgotten choice.
The parallel is instructive because the two traditions develop it toward different ends: Plato's myth functions within an argument about justice in a single philosophical dialogue, a one-time literary construction, while ori is embedded in Yoruba religion's entire divinatory apparatus, requiring lifelong attention and Ifa consultation because the forgotten choice must be continually rediscovered rather than simply accepted as a premise and set aside. Scholars generally treat the resemblance as independent convergence rather than evidence of historical contact.