“Everything happens for a reason”
Recently, a friend told me, “Everything happens for a reason,” when she found out she hadn’t gotten a job she’d applied for. Understandably (and admirably), she was talking about her missed opportunity in a resilient way. I’ll admit I’ve always wondered what people mean when they say that: “Everything happens for a reason.” Is there some universal law, like gravity or magnetism, that we can rely on to explain why things turned out the way they did?
I’ve been asking people what they mean when they say this for over a decade, and I think it’s usually just a platitude people casually use to comfort themselves about the uncertainty in their lives. I mean, I get it, uncertainty is uncomfortable. Humans crave certainty.
However, it seems to me that “everything happens for a reason” can be an intellectually and emotionally lazy way to side-step uncertainty and discomfort.
On the intellectual side of things, what is the “reason” everything happens for? There are a few plausible answers someone could give. Most of the time, I’ve found people haven’t thought this deeply about what they’re saying:
God or the Universe “conspiring on our behalf.”
I can’t argue with anyone’s faith, but this is kind of an intellectual dead end. It’s not a reason we can measurably observe and confirm.Hard determinism
Hard determinism comes at the cost of admitting that there is only one possible way events could unfold. The present moment is playing out in only one possible way, predicated by everything that has happened leading up to it. Hard determinism holds that free will doesn’t exist and is instead an illusion that comes as part of being human.Simple cause and effect*
I put my hand in the fire and I get a burn. The reason my hand burned is because I put my hand in the fire. This is so obvious that I doubt it’s what people mean.
I haven’t been able to think of any other potential “reasons” that make sense.
We do ourselves an emotional and intellectual disservice because we use nonsense to side-step the discomfort of our uncertainty. Some unfortunate thing has happened, and we comfort ourselves by saying things are happening according to some framework that presumably has our best interest in mind. In the end, everything will be ok. But, as we’ve just explored, that framework - that “reason” - is rarely actually examined. So it’s like saying, “Everything happens because [I don’t really know why, but there’s a good reason for it, and that gives me certainty and makes me feel better.]”
Instead, would it be better to examine that discomfort and uncertainty, to admit we don’t know why bad things happen or what will happen next? To realize that perhaps there isn’t some bigger force at work making sure that the universe revolves around you and everything will be ok in the end? Again, this isn’t a jab at people of faith but an observation that many people with faith have not thoroughly thought through what they’re placing their faith in.
“Ok,” you say, “what should I do instead?” Consider why you’re trying to give yourself certainty. Where do you lack control, and what fears are surfacing? If you choose to place your faith in a bigger power, who or what is that power? Does your faith empower you, or are you using it to bypass feelings of discomfort and uncertainty?
*It is interesting to note that it’s difficult to prove cause and effect exists. We’ve not identified or found a way to measure the “universal law of causality”, some force of nature that links Event A as the cause for its effect, Event B. Instead, cause and effect seems more like a mental shortcut resulting from probabilistic observations. We see Event A followed by Event B enough times and we form the assumption that Event B always follows Event A.
