“Everything Happens For A Reason”

“Everything happens for a reason.” Yes. The reason is that you drink too much and you make bad decisions.

“It’s all part of God’s plan.” If that’s the case, your God is a lousy planner.

“The Universe has something better for you.” The Universe is a collective term for all that is, not a divine helicopter parent.

You’ve heard people say these things. Maybe you’ve said them, to others or to yourself. They’re attempts to make us feel better when we’re struggling to deal with something painful in our lives. They tell us there is meaning and purpose even in tragic events. They comfort us with the thought that even if things look hopeless, some greater power is in control.

These words are absolutely false and absolutely toxic.

Asking for cause and effect when we want meaning

It’s perfectly good and natural to ask “why?” when something bad happens. I’ve been having trouble with my undertheancientoaks.com e-mail, and so I’ve been asking my service provider why. I want to have confidence they’ve found the root cause and have fixed it and it won’t happen again (they say they have – I’ll believe it when we go a few weeks with no more problems). There’s nothing wrong with asking that question.

But most times when we ask “why?” we’re not trying to do a deep dive into root cause analysis. Things would be better if we did. Rather, we’re asking what it means.

And that’s a much more difficult question.

Why was I not killed in a car wreck in 1985?

Many years ago, I took a long drive in snowy weather to visit some friends. I made it fine for 180 miles, and then in the last mile, after I had exited the Interstate, I slid off the road. I grazed a tree and put a slight dent in the front quarter panel and knocked the driver’s side mirror off. If I had been six inches to the right, I would have missed the tree completely and would have driven away with no damage. If I had been six inches to the left, I would have hit the tree head-on. These were the days before air bags – I would have been seriously injured and maybe killed.

Why did that happen?

It happened because I tried to take a curve faster than I should have given the conditions. I did that because I was tired after having driven for three hours, and I was overconfident because I had no problems on the highways – highways that had been kept clear by traffic. That’s why.

But why did I graze the tree instead of either missing it or hitting it head-on?

Strictly speaking, I grazed the tree because of the exact combination of the amount of ice on the road, tire composition and condition, driving speed, manipulation of the steering wheel, the grip of the tires on the ground when I left the road, and probably a dozen other factors. Change any one of those inputs and I have a different outcome, for better or for worse.

I can’t model all those inputs, much less control them with any precision. The answer to why I grazed the tree instead of either missing it or hitting it head-on is “pure random chance.”

And that’s an answer most of us don’t want to hear.

Looking for someone to blame

When something bad happens, we want someone to blame. We blame the President for the price of gas and the price of eggs, even though he has minimal impact on one and no impact on the other. It’s the immigrants’ fault, or the gays, or the Jews. Blaming Jews for bad things they had nothing to do with is a long tradition in the Christian world.

We’re taught not to blame a God when things go bad, but rather to be thankful that things weren’t worse. “Thank you, God, for sparing my house from the tornado, even though my neighbors’ houses were destroyed.” And then we have Calvinism arguing that “the elect” are favored by their God because they work hard and live right so you can feel like you’re good and your neighbors aren’t.

Or worse, “they” are controlling the world. Yes, billionaires create harm by their very existence (as billionaires, not as humans), and they have far more power than you or I, but they don’t control the world – as the current state of affairs should prove conclusively. Unless you want to insist that one group of evil billionaires has been overthrown by a different group of evil billionaires…

Instead of believing the obvious truth that elections have consequences and a third of the people in the United States don’t care enough to vote.

We can endure almost anything if we have a reason. But suffering because of what amounts to a roll of the cosmic dice? We can’t handle that.

Far too many people will believe any conspiracy theory rather than accepting the truth that no one is in charge and much of life is completely random.

The hard truth: much of life is random

Here’s the hardest part of accepting that yes, life is random and no, there is no deep meaning behind everything that happens to you. It forces you to accept that the world does not revolve around you. Or around us as humans.

But here’s the good part.

When we accept that randomness happens, we stop looking for deep meaning where none exists. That frees us to concentrate on finding real causes and effects. I didn’t slide off the road because I was sinful or because I hadn’t said the proper prayers. I slid off the road because I was driving too fast for conditions. I learned something from that.

This need not – and should not – lead us into atheism. We can remain good, observant polytheists who form and maintain reciprocal relationships with various deities not so they’ll be our guardian angels, but because we’re in agreement with their virtues and values and we want to help manifest them in this world. And because having them in our lives is a good thing.

We have relationships with some people based on quid pro quo. I don’t need to be friends with the plumber – I just need him to replace a stuck water valve. He doesn’t need to be friends with me – he just wants to get paid. On the other hand, people are my friends because we share common interests, and because we genuinely like each other.

The Gods are so far beyond us that calling them “friends” seems absurd. But better to interact with them as friends than as divine body guards. Plus the religious protection racket never seems to work out well in the end, regardless of which God you’re paying to protect you.

We are free to find meaning – or to make it

Even if we accept that the answer to “why?” is often “random chance,” we are still left searching for meaning. When we reject the comforting but clearly false idea that “it’s all part of a plan that going to work out for the best” we are free to find our own meaning – or to make it.

We begin with our worldview – the context in which we interpret evidence. My own worldview is grounded in animism, polytheism, science, magic, and myth. My core beliefs help me to understand life, the universe, and most importantly, my place in it.

I cannot control the political world. I can’t even influence it very much, even though I try. Asking “why?” things are the way they are has value (and I hope to all the Gods someone in the Democratic party is doing that and doing it well), but mainly I need to know how I can best respond to this new unpleasant reality. Where can I do the most good? How can I live a good life, and show others how to do the same? What can I do to make things better, if not now then in the future?

There is meaning and purpose even in tragic events – the meaning we find on our own, and the meaning we make.

When things look hopeless, we can take comfort not in the false idea that some higher power is “in control” but rather in the fact that we ourselves have agency. We can take action – mundane, magical, or both – and do something to make things better. We can gather with like minded people and take collective action – together we can accomplish what none of us can do alone.

Necessary work, not easy platitudes

“Everything happens for a reason” is technically true, but in the context in which it is usually uttered it is blatantly and harmfully false.

Instead, look for the root cause, to make it less likely that something bad will happen again. Or if it was something good, that it will happen again.

Accept that much of life is random, and that no one – not politicians, not billionaires, not even the Gods – is “in control” of everything.

And since there are no divine helicopter parents micromanaging your life, start the process of figuring out what you want and how you can best go about doing it. Find your own meaning – or make it.