Everything happens for a reason

Why do people say that? It’s like there is a suggestion that there is a cosmic universal force that is ready to pounce on someone if they stray from the path of moral certitude. Of course things happen for a reason, but do they happen for the reason you believe? The concept of “things happen for a reason” could never be proved to be wrong. At first when you meet someone special, you think “this happened for a reason I am destine to spend the rest of my life with this person.” And then when the person turns out not to be so special, you still think, or people tell you “this happened for a reason and the reason was to learn this hard life lesson.”

I think we live stories that are told to us over and over. If you grow up fundamentally believing that life will be a fight, be hard, be easy, be filled with heart ache or betrayals, be boring, be challenging, be full of losses then there is a high probability that your actions, experiences and outcomes will be shaped by these beliefs. Do you ever notice the difference between people who trust others and those who do not? All of our thoughts and actions will shape how we experience the world and especially what we’ve been told about the world. It’s a bit of a self-fulfilling fallacy, your view of the world is reinforced by your view of the world!

If things really happen for a reason then perhaps we should think about if we can create or shape the reason?! If we haven’t found the reason, does that mean we have not reflected enough to understand why certain events happen the way they happen in our lives? When tragic events happen are people supposed to understand these experiences through an insightful lens in order to make sense of them? Some events are just painful. Period. To “be thankful and grateful” of other good things in your life is to dismiss and even blame individuals for experiencing suffering. This isn’t to say that tragic events don’t lead to incredibly profound strength, insights and gratefulness, they do, but they don’t have to in order to “let go, move on, move through, or to understand.”

Things happen for a reason presumes a plan that you do not have any control over. That would be good if you didn’t want to take any responsibility in your life, for the good or the bad. While it’s understandable to want to make sense of a series of events sometimes our beliefs, the facts and our experiences are in competition with each other to know why things have happened. You are your own person. No one can tell you that “things happen for a reason” because it’s up to you to accept or dismiss any cause or correlation of events according to your history, your beliefs and the facts.