I do not believe that things happen for a reason. Sure there are reasons things happen, but there is no overarching plan.
When terrible things happen, people like to say that “things happen for a reason,” as if there is some plan that made this event necessary. I think people want to believe that their lives mean something, have a destiny, a purpose. They want a reality where every action, breeze, or accident is somehow preordained to ensure that something else will happen in the future.
But for that to be true, the end result must be imagined beforehand. There must be a sum or quotient or outcome that everything leads to.
Where a + b – c = x
or in life events,
grandma dying + you losing your job – you changing the neighbor’s tire = Cubs win the World Series
But I don’t believe that life could possibly work that way. I don’t believe that there is an equal sign in my life or anybody’s. Life is not an equation.
There is no destined or predetermined endpoint. How could there be?
If there were actually a god or some kind of universal being planning everything, then free will would not only be unnecessary but impossible. Every single action would be dictated by the plan. At that point, we would just be pawns in someone else’s game. And I refuse to believe in a universe like that. It doesn’t make sense.
Also, that would mean that this god planned the rape, the miscarriage, the war, the disease, the poverty, and the slavery that lead to our lives. I could not in good conscience respect or worship or even believe in such a being.
Life is not an equation with an equal sign. There is no x at the end of it.
Life is more like a + b – c / f * d + 2 … into infinity from day 1 to day n+1. It never equals anything. It never balances, it never sums. It’s life in all its chaotic, unplanned, unfathomable calculus of infinity.
That should be enough.
So Many Words... 