It's comforting to believe that everything happens for a reason—that there's some universal plan guiding us toward exactly what we need, either for this life or the next one. When you believe in this type of fate, everything feels purposeful and even, if not controllable, understandable. If you get sick, you could say God has given you the illness to strengthen your spirit. If you get in a car accident, you could say the Universe is teaching you to slow down and enjoy the journey more. Or broadly speaking, if you come up against any type of overwhelming adversity, you can take solace in the fact that nothing happens unless it's precisely what you need. That's Mira Kirshenbaum's theory, anyway. Her book Everything Happens for a Reason is a detailed guide to the value inherent in every difficulty.
She offers precisely ten reasons that something might happen in life, and they are all both useful and reassuring. Whether it's to help us accept ourselves, feel forgiveness, become stronger, find love, or live with purpose, in Kirshenbaum's world, everything is all about us—and all in our favor. I understand the allure of finding meaning in things that happen, and believing something bigger than ourselves is supporting us, weaving events together for our ultimate benefit and growth. The alternative is to accept that everything is random—that cause and effect exist, that what we do influences what we experience, but still the world at large is chaotic and unpredictable.
You might assume the latter is the less spiritual or empowering interpretation, but is it really? If we choose to learn and grow from the things that happen to us, is it even necessary to guess at why they happened? What's a more productive use of our energy—searching for meaning outside ourselves or creating meaning within ourselves?
I have always had a fascination with permanent disfigurement. It's an odd and somewhat embarrassing confession, I know. I've read a ton about victims of war, fire, abuse, and animal attacks because I am in awe of the strength it takes to go on after such devastating trauma. How does someone even begin to rebuild himself when he can no longer recognize the face he sees in the mirror? How does someone learn to move on when she has a visual reminder of the most painful and terrifying moment of her life? In a society where people often judge before offering compassion, how does a scarred cover find the will to contain a positive book? The closest I've ever come to an answer was in the middle of Ohio. To explain how I found myself there, I have to return once again to New York.
In 2006, I was ready to leave the city for good. I'd been practicing yoga for over a year, I'd quit smoking, and I had started looking a lotless like a malnourished, stress-case mess on legs. Having moved into a cockroach-free efficiency studio and saved up some cash through contract marketing work, I felt confident I had learned what I was meant to learn—how to take care of myself and bounce back from adversity instead of dwelling in self-pity. I was far from perfect, but I was beginning to care less about that, and that felt like a major success. Couple that with my renewed sense of health and rejuvenation, and I was ready to conquer the world.
My journey away from the Big Apple involved six million steps west. I saw an ad online for a fitness-related marketing tour called Steps Across America. Sportline, a company that makes pedometers, was sponsoring this promotional effort to increase awareness about the benefits of walking. They were looking for twelve people to form a relay team that would cross the United States on foot over three months— while blogging about it.
The opportunity seemed to be made for me. I'd been working so hard to improve my health, starting with my attitude, and I was a writer without a forum. I wanted nothing more than to recycle my hurt into something useful—to talk to people about empowering themselves and making proactive choices for their well-being. I was armed with countless journals full of type A—organized lists of lessons. I wanted to believe that all my past hurt and ill health had evolved as precursors to this opportunity to do good in the world—that everything that came before had a clear and useful purpose involving my helping people, not fearing them. And let's call a spade a spade—it wasn't entirely a selfless act. I wanted to head to California on an adventure that would make me feel proud of my journey thus far. I imagined it would be wonderfully harmonizing after years of carrying shame in every crevice of my being.
I was hired as an alternate, in case someone had to drop out. I don't know if it was my honesty in sharing my struggles, my passion for helping people, or my desperation, but I did leave New York City with a job. Someone had to walk the Iams spokesdog along different parts of the journey (as with any event, Steps Across America had an interesting collection of sponsors and corporate goals), and that person, they decided, would be me.
But I couldn't ride the tour bus since the manager was allergic to dogs, and I had to book my own hotels since the group wouldn't always be staying at pet-friendly places. I wasn't required to be at any of the tour's events, and I wasn't allowed to blog. To me, this all sounded like another three months of isolation, with a massive canine dependent. I wouldn't be part of the group; I wouldn't get to share stories with other people who had felt powerless to take control over their lives; and I wouldn't get to make pithy observations online, catapulting me to instant web-celeb status.
That is exactly how I whined about it to my family, right before I hopped off my soapbox and realized the gift I'd been given. I was being paid more than the walkers because of the added responsibilities, and I had abundant free time while crossing the country in a rented vehicle I didn't have to pay for. In the weeks leading up to the tour, I called dozens of schools and hospitals to see if I could speak to girls about loving themselves and their bodies. I had a story to share about learning to value and take care of yourself, and fate had handed me an even better situation than I originally signed up for. I could book my own gigs, on my own terms, with school-aged girls who may not have known how amazing and valuable they were—how worthy of love, acceptance, and happiness. Of course, many of the people I contacted respectfully declined my offer, but some did not.
What's a more productive use of our energy— searching for meaning outside ourselves or creating meaning within ourselves?
Whenever motivational speakers came to my elementary school back in the day, it always took me a while to warm up to them. At first I felt awkward and uncomfortable jumping into immediate intimacy with a stranger, and then there was the obligatory mocking between friends, communicated with eye rolls and giggles. School doesn't always feel like the safest environment to pin your heart to your sleeve or take a stand against immaturity. For this reason, I always understood when the girls I was now presenting to seemed distracted or resistant at the beginning of a session. They didn't know me; they didn't ask me to come; and they may or may not have been able to relate to the loneliness and low self-esteem I had developed at their age.
But every now and then, people completely defy expectations. The girl who did that for me appeared to be about twelve, and she had burn scars on both her face and her arms. She sat right in the front row during my fifth talk—no shying toward the back for her. She wore a short-sleeved shirt, which made sense considering the heat but felt to me unimaginably brave for a young girl who had been mutilated in a fire. She made eye contact with me immediately and seemed to comprehend a meaning behind my words that I hadn't even known to give them.
I told a story about my junior high years, exploring all the ways I learned to hate myself once it seemed like everyone else did. I talked about pressure and judgment, and how they can convince us there's something wrong with us. I explained that no one deserves to be mistreated, and that if we don't speak out, we might slowly start to believe otherwise. I talked about our differences—how kids can be cruel, especially when our bodies are changing, but we don't have to be defined by other people's perceptions. I'd given this same talk several times before, but somehow the trials and tribulations of puberty seemed insignificant considering the irreversible body transformation that the one particular girl staring at me had endured.
At the end, right after I said that we are all imperfect and yet we all deserve to be happy, I asked if anyone had any questions. That's when she raised her hand and asked, “Do you think bad things happen for a reason?” I couldn't help but wonder if what she was really asking was whether or not she somehow deserved her scars. I didn't have any definitive answer but, more important, I felt that what I thought didn't really matter. Regardless of what had happened or what she believed, she was choosing to be boldly herself—and during what has to be one of the most challenging times of a young girl's life. Whatever she told herself to make sense of her experience, wherever she'd learned to find strength and live with such an inspiring sense of presence, her own answer was something worth holding on to.
So I answered as honestly as I could: “I have no idea. But I know we can find a reason to use things that happen for good, and I know it feels good to focus on that.”
Though we often look for significance in the face of tragedy, it's not just when we have trouble accepting life that we clutch to the idea of fate. I recently watched a documentary about lottery winners called Lucky. A couple won more than $110 million on a day when a detour brought them to a store they didn't usually patronize. The wife commented that it had to be fate—they were in just the right place at just the right time, though it was completely coincidental that they ended up there. But then that begs the question: Why would they specifically be meant to win millions and another couple who took a detour to die in an accident? Why would some people be meant to have great fortune and others to know great hardship?
Here's a more interesting question: if a belief helps us find use in both good fortune and hardship, then does it matter whether it's true?
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote about amor fati, Latin for “loving one's fate.” The idea suggests seeing everything that happens in life as beautiful and good. A century earlier, in his book Candide, Voltaire proposed we don't live in the best of all possible worlds, but perhaps we needn't concern ourselves with that and instead should focus on the tasks in front of us—or “cultivate our own garden.” I'll admit to enjoying these philosophies if for no other reason than that my mind likes to play with ideas, but I can see value in both perspectives. It's also clear to me that where we place our belief will influence our attitude, our sense of personal power and, accordingly, our experience of life.
With this in mind, I asked on Twitter, “Does everything happen for a reason?”
Everything happens, not for a reason, but from our decisions. ∼@TheCatAndTheKey
Things happen as a consequence of the reason. ∼@interrabang
Everything happens for a reason, but you have to understand that you are this only one making things happen. ∼@Jimenix
The only reason things happen is due to our actions and mentality that we put into the world. Not of a greater being. ∼@freckledjess
Everything happens for a reason if you choose it to be so. If you do, life becomes full of meaning, wonder, and growth. ∼@Nirvana_Mamma
Do we have free will or is there something external guiding our choices and actions? Is there some type of cosmic plan leading us through specific experiences to a predetermined destination, or are our decisions our only road map? Does brain activity influence what we do before we're consciously aware of the choices we'll make? Are there other unconscious factors at play? Recent research has raised those questions, and one philosopher received $4.4 million to look into them.
As of January 2010, Alfred Mele, a professor at Florida State University is spearheading a four-year exploration into free will that considers philosophy, science, and religion. Mele made an interesting observation when discussing the project, as reported on the FSU website:
“If we eventually discover that we don't have free will, the news will come out and we can predict that people's behavior will get worse as a consequence. We should have plans in place for how to deal with that news.”
Past studies seem to indicate that people act aggressively and dishonestly when we believe we don't have free will, perhaps because there's a lot less guilt and fewer moral implications when we consider that maybe a decision isn't entirely in our own hands. Which is more useful: to believe we are in complete control and then make more positive choices, or to accept that we're powerless to fate and then leverage that to excuse bad behavior?
A few years back, I went on a date with a recovering alcoholic. Let's call him Rob. He told me the disease was in his blood, as his father was an alcoholic. I figured it was likely more environmental than genetic, but regardless, it made sense that to some extent alcoholism was in his future from a very young age. I admired that he made this early admission instead of sticking to his well-crafted personal elevator pitch, like a lot of us do on first dates. I also appreciated that he made it abundantly clear he never wanted to get married or have kids. It's a lot easier to have the “let's be friends” talk when you never really considered going beyond it. So we became friends— good ones.
We are the ones making the choices, and regardless of everything that influences them, we're the ones who need to be accountable.
This might be why, a few weeks later, he felt comfortable enough to tell me that he had to register as a sex offender for sleeping with his adopted teen cousin. She had consented, according to Rob, but she was underage. Later I learned a second, even more disturbing story that still haunts me to this day: I have to imagine that Rob's younger sister, who couldn't have been more than five when he fondled her in his adolescence, wasn't as willing a participant as his cousin. When he told me that he had been touched by his older sister as a toddler, I felt a combination of compassion and repulsion that challenged everything I had previously thought about understanding and forgiveness.
Nothing condones abuse, but when someone has been abused, does that provide a viable explanation for their actions? Was it possible Rob's older sister, who also had been molested by their father, was part of an irrepressible cycle, which continued with Rob as well? Were his childhood choices somehow inevitable? And if that was the case, at what point does an abused child who learns to abuse have to take responsibility and learn a different way?
We all have difficult things in our past. We've all been hurt on some level, though some of us in more appalling and reprehensible ways. None of us had perfect parents, though some of us knew more idyllic childhoods than others did. Everyone has a closet, and there are at least a few skeletons in all of them. But at some point, we all need to decide that no one else can dictate what we do. No one else can decide how we react to our feelings. No one else can choose whether we act on instinct or question whether those impulses are actually serving us and the people around us.
We are the ones making the choices, and regardless of everything that influences them, we're the ones who need to be accountable— at least to the best of our ability. Someone with Parkinson's doesn't choose to tremble and someone with schizophrenia doesn't consent to hallucinate. But when it comes to the everyday decisions we all face, we are in the driver's seat. And if we aren't fully, if Professor Mele finds something that challenges this line of thinking, if the studies suggest a future where personal responsibility becomes obsolete: it might be in our best interest not to know.
If you've assumed that you are powerless to create the life you really want:
Identify the ways in which you feel stuck. Do you feel like you have to work in the family business because it's what your parents planned for you? Do you believe you'll never find someone to love you because you think you're damaged? Do you feel like you can't be happy because you hurt a lot of people and deserve to be miserable because of that? Think of this as cause-and-effect thinking—you are assuming that a cause has to lead to a specific effect.
Recognize how you are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Realize that things aren't happening because of external factors—they are happening because of how you respond to those external factors. Because you won't confront your family, you're working in a business you don't love. Because you think people won't love you, you're pushing them away. Because you're judging yourself, you're leaving yourself no room to forgive yourself. Realize the power is in what you choose to do.
Make a different choice in this moment. This isn't major transformation—it's one choice, right now, to see things differently and take control of your experience today. It might mean volunteering somewhere to feel out what you enjoy beyond that family business. Or sharing a little of yourself with someone new, instead of assuming people believe you're damaged. Or doing one thing that makes you happy instead of thinking about your happiness as a long-term impossibility. You don't need to worry about forever; you just have to choose to use this moment to create the future, instead of letting the future create you.
Everything happens is the reason. ∼@marqueb
The reasons things happen don't matter so much as the reasons you react to them the way you do. ∼@d_cahill
Things just happen with purposes and consequences. ∼@twiras
It's more useful to find benefit than seek cause. ∼@jesusina
Reasons why stuff happens are made up and also very powerful. So make up useful reasons that make you feel liberated and loved. ∼@cathduncan
When we fixate on reasons, it's almost like we're looking for someone to blame, or at least to hold accountable. Instead of focusing our attention on accepting, healing, and moving on from our experiences, we get lost in a sea of whys, looking for some logic in the past. Researcher Carey Morewedge found that we're more likely to assign blame for bad things that happen than to offer praise for good things. She hypothesized that we do this because we can't predict and prepare to avoid unexpected negative occurrences, so we instinctively want to believe something external was responsible. It feels safer to understand a specific cause. Unfortunately, there isn't always someone or something to accuse; and searching for that can keep us stuck for a lifetime.
You don't need to worry about forever; you just have to choose to use this moment to create the future, instead of letting the future create you.
Psychologists have also suggested that people are less likely to play the blame game if we're prone to finding the good in a situation. When we can see something as useful, it's easier to let go of that thing's bad parts and move on. It's empowering to imagine that whatever happened, we can grow and prosper for having gone through it. If we're more apt to wallow in the unfairness of it all, we'll probably feel infuriated and want a target to receive that rage. What's more, we very well may get trapped there in that place of indignant self-pity. The moment we decide that something is inherently bad and that we are victims, our judgment starts a cycle of negative emotions. It's difficult to let go of anger and bitterness when we're convinced that we're justified in holding on to them.
So, let's focus on what we can do once something happens that we can't explain. It will naturally take time to get to that place—and we're allowed to take that time. Just like we go through seven stages of grief when someone dies, we need to follow a process to come to terms with other difficult changes. We need to allow ourselves to feel. At some point, however, we need to learn, grow, and choose to let it all go. As Ajahn Chah said, “If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace.” Part of that letting go is being accountable.
In the same Discovery News article where I first learned about More-wedge's blame research, writer Teresa Shipley referenced the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that happened on April 20, 2010. An explosion on a drilling rig for the BP oil company caused the largest oil spill ever— roughly 185 million gallons of oil when all was said and done. Investigations have revealed that workers on the rig felt hesitant to report safety violations, and further examination showed that equipment on the rig hadn't been inspected since 2000—even though it should be checked every three to five years. These reports, among others, came after Texas Governor Rick Perry suggested the oil spill might have been an act of God. He spoke in favor of continued drilling and said, “From time to time there are going to be things that occur that are acts of God that cannot be prevented.”
There is a difference between an inexplicable tragedy, like a seven-year-old dying of natural causes, and a human-made mistake. Sometimes there are no answers, no matter how desperately we want to understand. But other times we needn't look any further than our own choices to explain the things that happen in our lives. In being honest with ourselves and acknowledging our humanity— the inevitability that we will make mistakes, both minor and major—we have immense power. We can't ever go back and change what happened. We can't un-spill the oil. The teens who relentlessly harassed their gay peers until they chose to commit suicide can't un-torment them. My cousin, who killed a man while driving under the influence, can't un-drink-and-drive. And the rest of us can't change the consequences of their actions by judging, berating, or ostracizing them. We can, however, learn.
We can learn to take better care of our earth—that we can't expect to deplete all of our natural resources, particularly not with an eye on cost-efficiency, if we want to protect our planet for future generations. We can learn to take better care of each other—that we need to offer compassion, understanding, and love if we want to live in a compassionate, understanding, and loving world where people don't hate and hurt each other. We can learn to take better care of ourselves—that what we put into our bodies and what we do in response to our feelings create a ripple effect for our future beyond a moment of instant gratification.
We won't always make the best choices, but we can keep learning to make better ones. The beautiful thing about life is that we have the ability to do things differently from one day to the next. We have the power to choose what we think and what we do. We have the choice to move on—even from the experiences we can't understand—with a determination to do good in the world. We can bounce back from any mistake and take the lesson to do something positive.
The reason may or may not be clear. Regardless, we can grow and, in doing so, change the world.
If you've been playing the victim in life:
Recognize blames that you've been holding on to. It may sound like this: Nothing good happens for me because I have bad luck. People don't like me because of my disability. I'll never get healthy because of my genetics. It's the government's fault that I'm on welfare. Who or what do you often blame for the things that you wish didn't happen to you?
Turn a constructive finger at yourself. The point isn't to blame yourself—it's to take responsibility for your part in what happened so that you can make a positive adjustment in the future. Did your negative thinking create that “bad luck” by limiting the risks you took? Is your attitude about your disability pushing people away? Are you using your genetics as an excuse not to exercise?
Use what you learn—today. Once you take responsibility for your part, you can now decide how to move forward in a way that sets you up for a better result in the future. For example, in realizing that your negative thinking is creating your bad luck, you can now identify and reframe negative thoughts when they hold you back. You can challenge limiting beliefs and push yourself to do things differently. It's not about blaming anyone—including yourself. It's about letting go of bitterness related to something or someone else's role in what happened and empowering yourself to do something useful.
Things happen due to the randomness of things, which ego-centered want to be special/unique humans have such a hard time with. We are all random links. ∼@wolforcaeagle
It's what people say when something they can't understand happens. ∼@TEDDYMEISTER
We may be able to sometimes find direction in things that happen, but it doesn't all happen for a reason. ∼@smola04
People who look for reason in everything that happens become neurotic and superstitious. Life is about living. ∼@rcannonl00
There is order in randomness; we have to make sense of the chaos. ∼@sleepspell
Without some greater understanding of why things happen—some idea of why we're here, why we're challenged, and why we eventually leave this world at a time that inevitably feels too soon—it can all seem somewhat pointless. Without a clear sense of purpose, actions seem arbitrary. When we don't feel a sense of universal order, everything feels unpredictable and frighteningly chaotic. Much like we needed stability as kids, we look for the same sense of constancy and security in adulthood. It's why studies show that people who have a clear sense of purpose report a greater sense of well-being than do people who don't. A guiding plan gives us a reason to go on.
Back then when we were kids, as much as we needed consistency, we also liked to test and push boundaries. We wanted to feel safe and secure within our environment, but we also wanted to see just how far we could go—exactly how much power we had to get the things we wanted. It's largely the same in adulthood. We crave the familiar but fantasize about the unknown. We fight for a sense of order, the perfect routine in the perfect job, only to then wonder what else is out there.
Life is a constant dance between wanting and resisting comfort. It's unlikely we'll ever relinquish the need to question, challenge, and want things. That's not to say we have to drive ourselves mad obsessing over things we can't explain or fester in discontent over everything that's lacking. Maybe the nature of things—the uncertainty, the impermanence, and that eternal sense of longing—is actually working in our favor. Maybe embracing the chaos and acknowledging that there are some things we can't control can actually be beneficial.
In their book Seven Life Lessons of Chaos: Timeless Wisdomfrom the Science of Change, John Briggs and F. David Peat suggest we can learn, grow, and prosper by accepting the randomness of life. For starters, our unpredictable world allows abundant opportunity for creativity. When we're less confined by perfectionism and rigid views of how things should be, we're better able to let our creations unfold before us. That random brushstroke from when you tripped while painting might be the start of an even greater masterpiece. The same theory translates into the workplace, where innovation tends to come from chaos and self-organization, not inflexible, overly bureaucratic structures. People often discover the best ideas when allowed to follow our own process.
Embracing chaos also shades the world a whole new level of beautiful, when you consider that every tree, every leaf, every snowflake, every cloud is similar to others but unique, with an infinite number of subtle nuances. And then there's the natural conclusion that we are fractally connected to each other and the universe at large. We may not be in total control, but we don't need to be. We are part of something whether we fully understand it or not.
We can't change the nature of things, but we can change how we interpret it.
If we choose to accept the world as it is, we have limitless opportunities for newness and excitement, unbridled by all the fears that keep us clutching at a greater sense of control. As a recovering perfectionist, type-A control freak, I understand the instinct to fight this. I know I feel alive and sublimely happy when spontaneity leads me on an adventure I didn't know to crave, but that's not always what happens when I let go. To the same degree uncertainty can be exciting and fun, it can be terrifying and painful. There is never any guarantee that an event will unfold exactly as we planned it—and no matter what religious or spiritual beliefs we adopt, there's no clear answer as to whether or not what happens will mean anything beyond the fact that it happened.
Roughly two years ago, Ehren took me on our second date, which started with a nosedive out of a tiny plane from thirteen thousand feet in the air. I'd mentioned casually on our first date that I had always wanted to go skydiving, which I did—someday. It didn't seem like the best second date plan since it could entail tears and incontinence (luckily only the former was true). But I wanted to do it. I'd told him I wanted to do it, he'd done it before, and I wanted to prove to myself that I could.
Before he picked me up that day, I tweeted about my plans, and someone sent me a link about skydiving fatalities. I already knew it was possible that something could go wrong, but it seemed unlikely until I saw the cold hard facts. Suddenly I felt legitimately concerned my parachute might malfunction and send me plummeting to certain death— and how completely senseless. People might justify it by saying it was my time, or it was God's plan. But what if my death meant nothing more than that it's dangerous to hurl your body out of a plane? That no matter how controllable a situation may seem, things sometimes happen without any reason beyond the literal cause?
I made the jump that day—after leaving a note letting my family members know I loved them, just in case. I pushed myself to go, despite my fear and instinctive resistance, because it wasn't just a choice to impress my boyfriend-to-be. It was a choice to let go—to take a risk, feel alive, trust the system created to protect me, knowing it isn't infallible, and then accept the consequences of fully living. Every day is uncertain; even the least risky choices can lead to accidents for which no speculative reason will seem sufficient. We just can't know what the future holds, and fixating on that or clutching to comforting illusions won't change that. We can't change the nature of things, but we can change how we interpret it.
We can choose not to board the plane for fear of turbulence, lightning, or any other unpredictable force of nature, or we can recognize that sometimes, even the weather forecast is wrong, and it's worth the risk of what might be to soar among the chaotically beautiful clouds.
If you've been stressing out about chaos and uncertainty:
Learn to recognize when you know all you can. To some degree you can manage uncertainty by learning and making educated decisions, but there are always going to be variables you didn't know to plan for. No decision is 100 percent risk free, and you need to embrace that or you'll spend your whole life clinging to what feels safe, only to one day realize that nothing is. Instead of paralyzing yourself because of the things you don't know, empower yourself when you feel you know all you can, aware that whatever happens, you can make the best of it.
Recognize the value in not knowing. It's human instinct to want to understand, but maybe the point isn't to have all the answers— maybe it's the experience of exploring the uncertainty and chaos. Because we don't know, we create, we innovate, we explore together. We write books. We make art. We make films. We design. We code. We invent. We find new ways to piece together the knowns and the unknowns to give life to new ideas.
Find your creative outlet. On her website CreativityAtWork.com, creativity and innovation consultant Linda Naiman suggests, “To make the most of chaos, look for patterns, and connections between disparate data to formulate innovative ideas.” What do you do with the patterns you identify? Do you write about them? Photograph them? Video them? Instead of trying to control everything to feel a sense of order, identify how you can take the disorder to create something useful and beautiful.
Life's events play off one another, like the moon and the waves. ∼@bjr71190
In nature, all things happen for a reason; reason constrained by reactions, time, and space. ∼@quietman1920
If everything in life didn't happen for a reason, then what would be the point? ∼@Richyboy81
Everything is energy. Things happen in the order they are supposed to in accordance with the energy flow surrounding them. ∼@debismyname
It could take a day to months to years to figure out why something transpired how it did, but it was meant to occur. ∼@jillianscrazy
You may be wondering how I can write an entire section on why things happen and only vaguely mention religion. How can I possibly address causes without exploring the various creation stories and offering due respect to a creator? Or, as someone who writes frequently about Buddhist ideals, how can I have discussed cause and effect without writing an in-depth treatise on energy and karma?
The only thing that I know for certain is that I do not know. I don't know in what literal way we're all connected. I don't know if there is a God or how to define that being. I don't know if any creation story is even close to accurate. I don't know if we have souls or spirits, and whether or not they are all made from the same essence. I don't know if we exist beyond the experience we have on earth. I have no idea if we are all drops in the Universal ocean or if our individual consciousnesses are all pieces of one higher consciousness. If I wrote a blog on all the things that I don't know, I would have sufficient content to write every day for the rest of my life, and still not cover everything.
I suspect this is true for people in general: no matter how much we learn, there will always be a vast body of knowledge we not only don't have but also aren't equipped to understand. Living on earth we see the effect, but can't pinpoint a cause, no matter how sure we are that something makes sense. There are answers out there, but that doesn't change the fact that we don't know them. In my eyes, it's far more valuable for us to come together in our common ignorance over the things we can't yet prove than it is to separate ourselves through assumed knowledge. The thing about beliefs is that they are not always facts, regardless of how comforting or plausible they may seem—and even if the majority of people believe them.
When I was fifteen years old, I was confirmed in the Catholic church wearing a pentagram. In retrospect, I realize this was blatantly disrespectful, regardless of what I may have believed at the time. Back then, it felt imperative that I do this. A year earlier, after getting my tarot cards read at a Boston psychic shop, I decided to become a Wiccan. Organized religion had never resonated with me, and I didn't know that I was willing to put my faith in anything I couldn't prove. I knew that Wicca was a New Age spiritual discipline that honored both gods and goddesses and that Wiccans believed they could create change in the world by working with energy and nature. I'd also seen a lot of practitioners wearing gorgeous velvet capes and participating in highly theatrical rituals. I figured if I was going to arbitrarily choose beliefs, they might as well involve magic and costumes.
I suggested to my family that I should skip the confirmation since I didn't actually want to take the sacrament, but that wasn't an option at the time. I won't blame my parents for this, because they were clearly doing what they thought was best. Back then, I didn't feel quite that way. Maybe it was my raging teenage hormones, residual angst, or just plain defiance, but I felt the need to make a strong point that day: I wouldn't be told what to believe or what my life means. I would not accept an explanation for life based on what other people agree sounds conceivable. If people wanted me to respect their beliefs—to allow them an answer that makes sense through their perceptions—they needed to do the same for me. I needed the freedom to understand how we are all connected however it made sense to me. Ironically, in making that point, I failed to consider the impact it would have on some of the people I'm connected to. I wanted the most soothing possible answer, and I was willing to hurt people to own it.
It wasn't until years later, when I considered that maybe none of us are right, that I felt truly connected to everyone. That's something we all have in common: we all want to understand why we're here and why things happen. We all live in an uncertain world, and when we find an explanation that feels reassuring and empowering, we want to share it and even fight for it. We all want to believe there's some greater purpose—that we are not alone, but are, in fact, part of something larger than ourselves. Call it global consciousness, call it Universal energy, call it God—every religion revolves around it like the earth around the sun. Just like we want to be loved by each other, we want to know some higher power loves and looks out for us—the ones who are still here and the ones who have passed.
We can clutch at the things we'd like to believe, fighting each other for finding different theories more credible, or we can decide it's more important to be peaceful than right. We can desperately seek explanations for everything, using our energy to understand the bigger cause, or we can be the causes that create the effects we'd like to see in the world.
Does everything happen for a reason? Of course it does—lots of reasons. But the reasons don't matter anywhere near as much as what we do with what happens.