November 8, 2010
One of the phrases I heard often during the emotional events of the past few years is “Things happen for a reason.” The other night while Clarke and I were watching a reality show one of the contestants spoke the same phrase as she predicted elimination from the show.
“I think everything happens for a reason,” she said.
“No they don’t!” I reflexively argued with the screen.
“Why does that make you so upset?” Clarke asked.
“Because it’s just a way that this woman is rationalizing why this bad thing— elimination from a contest she’s competing in— is okay. She’s trying to tell herself that things really aren’t as bad as they are. She’s trying to console herself that there is a purpose in her suffering… that it will lead to something bigger and better, and that is just not necessarily the case.” I said.
I don’t think things happen for a reason and I find it unsettling when people want to tell me that cancer, or my mother-in-law’s death, or anything that has been a challenge has happened as part of some grand plan for something better.
I just don’t believe it. And I don’t want you to believe it about my life, either.
I think things just happen — and when they do, you have to decide how you are going to handle them. Those actions, those responses, can teach you lessons, but they are lessons you teach yourself. You can grow, get stronger, do something that you otherwise never would have. Alternatively, you might learn that you made a mistake and should deal with a situation differently the next time it comes up.
My attitude?
Don’t give away the credit.
Don’t minimize the hurt or disappointment.
Don’t rationalize why it isn’t as a big a deal as it is.
There isn’t necessarily a purpose in suffering; it’s not part of a causal narrative that “passing the test” will get you to the next step. You make your own tests, you find your own lessons. But using the word reason implies that it was given to you, designed for you.
And I just don’t believe that.
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Thank you for re-posting. I really like this one.
An all-time favorite. Thanks for being so honest and right.
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The answer to everything about life is there is no reason. All the bull shit in the world does not give meaning for more more BS. Religion is the best way to turn BS into an industry that sells BS and it makes fools of sane people and make those who sell BS rich and make people fight and die to protect it.
Thank you for writing this! Such a fantastic post, and I am so very with you on this.
Thank you! I love this. As a person with multiple chronic illnesses and who is part of an online bereavement group, I can’t tell you how often I hear this, and I end up yelling, like you do. You make excellent points.
Although, a while back, I changed my response: Yes, everything happens for a reason. It’s not necessarily a good or desirable reason, but yes, of course there is always a precipitating factor fro everything.
The reason I have Lyme disease is that an infected tick bit me. My wonderful service dog died too young from cancer; the reason is that he was exposed to some combination of carcinogens and/or had a genetic predisposition to cancer.
The reason that contestant was being kicked off the game? The other contestants decided to get rid of her. That’s the reason.
Somehow, taking this platitude and treating it like it’s a rational sentence takes the air right out of it, for me. I get a perverse sense of pleasure from that.
Amen.
I’d offer that the instinct to explain events as happening for a reason is, itself, not irrational. Not at the base, and not in all circumstances.
In the dimension of being a survival trait, pattern matching, searching for causes and reasons, is vital at a primitive level. The primate that sees bushes shudder and never imagines it might be happening for a reason, has a lower chance of surviving than the primate that plays it safe and assumes something is lurking in the bushes ready to pounce.
In another sense, the seed for “everything happens for a reason” may speak to a certain awareness that all events have the potential to be valuable. The lesson learned may be harsh, but strength and growth can come from nearly any event. Thus, “everything happens for a reason” is retrocausal. There is a subtle truth in the phrase.
Having said that, the biggest problem the notion faces is that it doesn’t work very well for advanced creatures, like human beings, who have a capacity for constructing elaborate frameworks in their mind based on pure conjecture… if the human being also doesn’t keep “there’s a reason for everything” slotted into its proper place in the scheme of things.
We have an insufficient degree of rationality in the world for most people to comprehend the difference between self-organizing structure and the hand of an overt intelligence, a specific plan laid out. In the battle for survival, all things do happen for a reason! Just as evolution is anything but “random”. But the reason is how events, no matter how good or bad, may change you, not because events are following a scripted plot floating out there in the cosmos.