‘Everything happens for a reason.’

I am no stranger to this cliché, having heard it several times in life. Until very recently though, I had not paid very much attention to it. I used to give it little more than a passing nod as it went in one ear and out the next. It ranked right up there with ‘a stitch in time saves nine’ or ‘the darkness always comes before the dawn’ – clever little guidelines for walking the path of life.

Recently, during a (mildly heated) discussion however, someone said to me, ‘Everything happens for a reason’ and I heard myself saying ‘That’s not true!’ Then I as I continued talking in an effort to make my point, I realised that I really did not give much merit to the idea that everything happens for a reason.

I agree that technically speaking, it is true. One action/occurrence precipitates another action/occurrence. A + B --> C. Hence A and B are the reasons that C happened. In the literal sense, each event has an underlying reason.

However, when you really ponder the statement and take it beyond the obvious, it has its flaws as a total life philosophy. Firstly, it is extremely vague and all-encompassing. ‘Everything’ happens for ‘a reason.’ I mean, no shit Sherlock. ‘Everything’ refers to all and sundry both within and without this universe of ours and ‘a reason’ is just about anything that can be considered even mildly causative. So saying that everything happens for a reason is not exactly a brilliant pearl of wisdom.

I find that in most situations, this saying is used as a source of comfort. The interpretation is usually, ‘Everything happens for a reason that you may not understand now, but as time elapses you will look back and understand and feel a great deal better.’ But, consider the saying, ‘Hindsight is 20-20.’ I really cannot think of a situation that does not seem clearer in retrospect. Whatever choice is made or path is taken, it is easy to look back and impose a comforting reason on the event. The reason we chose to impose, may in fact not have had anything to with the event.

If for example you are not accepted to your first choice college, but you meet your future husband at your second choice college, you may gleefully conclude that you missed your first choice college because you were destined to meet your beloved, when in fact you just had piss-poor grades. It reminds me of the fox and the grapes fable, where after not getting something that was desired, the conclusion is drawn that it was not that desirable anyway.

That is to say that if most people were given the opportunity (I donno, maybe in some parallel universe, just go with it) to live two lives with identical outlines but at each juncture take divergent paths, each and every time they would conclude that each choice was for ‘the best’ and each resulting life was the way it was ‘supposed to unfold’.

Essentially whatever the event or outcome, we humans have a way of attempting to impose order and reason on it, trying to draw connections even if none exist. It is similar to a belief in some cosmic hand keeping everything in order, orchestrating events which unfold one by one, guided by a perfect reason that humans cannot understand. Very religious overtones eh? The agnostic in me has trouble completely embracing that philosophy.

Don’t get me wrong, I can see the merits in looking at life that way. As I said before, it is comforting. Life seems to have order to it, where pleasant surprises wait around the corners that devastating events have lead us to. It also allows us to take life as it comes with all its ups and downs, lift our sagging spirits during the tough times where nothing makes sense, and keep us grounded in the midst of seemingly random tumult. It helps us to see the positives in each situations and take life lessons from them. I would be lying if I said that I did not find myself taking comfort in these thoughts sometimes.

My fear is that some people use this philosophy as a cop-out. Giving free rein to a vague, yet-to-be-determined ‘reason’ relieves us of some responsibility, because no matter what decision is made and no matter the outcome, we can say that it happened for a reason and was meant to be. That way we need not bother ourselves with being fully accountable for our actions, for in the grand scheme, life was ‘meant to turn out this way’.

I believe that life should not happen to us; we should happen to life. I believe in purposefully creating paths and taking responsibility for choices, not imposing reason after the fact but in being guided by it from the onset. We actively create and destroy, rise and plummet, do and leave undone. I’m all for embracing autonomy in life wherever possible. Divorcing oneself from cosmic order and reason can be scary, like having the magic carpet yanked from beneath one’s feet. But hey, when you’re freefalling, you get to stop and do cartwheels whenever you want …