I feel the need to burst a few bubbles. A few mildly delusional yet calming quips that are thrown around genuinely enough, but which I personally have a great desire to slap into oblivion. One in particular has irked me for some time, I think most of all because I found myself using it the other day and had to check myself for it. – “everything happens for a reason”.
Whether it’s to try us, compel us, sedate us or validate our choices, it crops up in some form or another in times of trial or exaltation. It’s said so often it hangs in the air like some kind of hypnopaedic rhyme, and I can easily understand why.
Leaving aside matters of fate and predestination for a moment, this one phrase portrays a vision of a world that you need take no personal responsibility for. With a shrug of the shoulders and a worldly sigh (or smirk) it can seem to emanate a silent wisdom, a sense of speaking the unspeakable that life can hurl at us. Yet this one phrase doesn’t say anything at all, it just seems to hover uselessly, stopping all further discussion in its tracks. There can be a fine balance between recognising our unknowing, and propagating indifference, and it troubles me to think we are being taken in by a line that is something of a wolf in sheeps’ clothing. To respond to every situation believing it is always part of a bigger plan is not respectful of the unknown, it can very easily be insulting to it, not to mention rather narcissistic.
We attach meaning to the events which affect us in life, yet there is just as much chaos and randomness to contradict our reasoning. Life happens to us, but to think every occurrence has been custom-made for our character development is nothing more than ridiculous, and it can sting one person while ‘comforting’ another.
In fact, I am not as much a cynic as this makes out. I do believe events can arise, choices can be made and opportunities can present themselves at times where it really does seem like a guiding hand is showing the way. I have an admiration and interest in fate and karma, as I am not fool enough to show anything less, and certainly do not have it all figured out.
What seems to have been forgotten, however, in this simplified fateful phrase, is that we have autonomy! We have the scope to make choices throughout our lives which are neither black nor white, but grey, and often indiscernible. From the outset then, this is a much more intricate ‘path’ that we travel, in which we are changed by the choices we make, and the meanings we incessantly give them can make them weights that are dragged behind us, just as much as putting a determined spring in our step.
I do not mean to take away what I see gives some people comfort, but it is a phrase that simply won’t hold up to tragedy. Sooner or later the cotton wool will fall away from this adorable package at a time when we may need to believe it the most. Like the contrast between darkness and light, there is a pervading senselessness in our world that we cannot explain away, indeed should not. It is in facing these unreasonable happenings and utterly disbelieving events that the strength of the human character can really be shown.
Rather than seeking hidden explanations for all that happens to us and others, perhaps we would be better to look for a hand that heals those wounds, and for eyes to open up to the raw truth that exists in companionship.
Let’s rethink the ‘blueprint’, and for those intrigued by a little theological discussion, read this article 🙂
Rx
Dutchblend 