Everything Happens for a Reason

"Everything happens for a reason." This platitude comes up frequently in our society, but it is used more as a casual, verbal sigh, utilized to shrug off an otherwise inconvenient event that doesn’t make sense in its occurrence, and which is usually attributed to Murphy’s Law. It is most often not submitted as a serious reminder of universal fate, as it is just something to say at a time when no other ready-made explanation fits some stroke of ill-fortune. Many people don’t believe that everything happens for a reason, at all. That, to me, is absurd, for everything certainly happens for a reason, because our existence is very much established by cause and effect. However, there is more to it than mere mechanics, but not too much more.

It is false that “good things happen to bad people,” and that “bad things happen to good people,” in the sense that the universe has some ulterior motive. The truth is that things happen. Further, things happen to people. That is fact. Our interpretation is subjective, regarding whether these things that happen are good or bad. Good and bad, however, do not exist in the natural world. There are light and dark, positive and negative, productive and destructive; these things are natural and real. One extreme cannot exist without the other. However, good and bad are human perceptions based upon our beliefs and preferences, not based upon universal truth. One person’s good is another person’s bad. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Things just happen. Assigning personal projections to the universe is selfish and outright absurd, but people do it all the time, and it causes tons and tons of trouble.

Things happen because of direct influences. Things also happen because of indirect and even roundabout influences. This is what the Butterfly Effect is all about. Regardless, a direct action would be represented by dropping a ball into a bucket. An indirect action would be represented by a Rube Goldberg machine that drops the same ball into the same bucket, but only after the ball travels through an extensive network of physical mechanisms, such as levers and springs. Life is a mixture of both types of influences. The confusing part arises when we don’t see the direct connection between things we do and the outcome. Things that happen to us for seemingly no reason are effects of random influences that, once put into motion, must resolve somewhere in the world, or even out in the universe. Life is a series of chaotic and ordered events, one always feeding the other, always working together. Everything happens for a reason. That’s just the way it works, whether we can see the reasons or not, and whether we like the reasons or not. But this is the one side of the issue.

Things happen as the causes of events, yes, but from the other side, we could say that there are other, non-physical influences that cause things to happen in order for us to take advantage of opportunities. Most often, these opportunities are lessons we can utilize to acknowledge something we previously ignored or something we didn’t see at all. These are opportunities to confront something we need to learn so that we may gain wisdom. It is entirely possible that our actions, being based upon personal fears and insecurities, and whatnot, are influencing our surroundings. This is fair since we do as we believe; action follows thought. This is a form of self-fulfilling prophecy, as well. In this motion, there will be repercussions of our actions, whether our actions are conscious, subconscious, or unconscious is hardly relevant, as we are still driven by our beliefs, desires, fears, and emotions. Logically, the ramifications of our actions can create circumstances that affect us in a way that we must confront these shortcomings that drive the entire process in the first place. Further, other beings can, and often will, be affected by our actions. They may be affected because their own actions put them in that place for a reason, or because they were randomly affected by the course of chaos. However, just because something happens to someone for seemingly no reason at all, certainly does not mean that it actually had no reason. Sometimes, as beings that share a common existence on a common, planetary organism, things happen to us because we are integral elements for the process of someone else’s lesson to be accomplished. This is another reason that global unification of spirit and truth need to be embraced. As a consistently functioning union of beings across the globe, and as part of the natural world once again, we will be able to make the most of these situations, helping one another and gaining the most wisdom from these lessons universally. The wrong thing to do is take it personally, or be selfish and think that the universe has ulterior, biased motives. Do not project, do not assume. Things happen. Things happen for reasons. Things happen to all beings. Seek the opportunities. Gain the wisdom.