For a Reason

One of the most fatuous things anyone can say when trying to comfort another is that “everything happens for a reason,” Implying, of course, a good reason. 

But I do not accept that the sufferings and calamities of the world are orchestrated in a good cause. If they are so directed, an evil cosmic entity is at fault. 

Now I can easily intuitively believe that I have a personal protective spirit, who knowingly shapes my ends, perhaps choosing the best path for my spirit among infinite alternatives. But the nasty correlation to such a reality would be that everything and everyone else are merely props to my own well-being. That is a morally dangerous solipsism which I intellectually reject. 

Language constructs narrative. Some people are able to fit just about everything into their own story, making it useful and interesting. And like any good novelist, our consciousness can weave every event and circumstance that we encounter into a fantastic worldview which is much of who we are.

So certainly in my own life much seems to have happened for at least the reason that it helped to make me who I am. On the other hand, I am open-minded enough to think alternatives would have worked (or not.) Mostly things just happened. And later with much clever imagination, I could attach a meaning.