The WordPress/JetPack writing prompt for today is:
Do you think everything happens for a reason?

I think ‘a reason’ is an imposed externality, and thus not universal.

Think on the mass school shootings in Columbine or Sandy Hook. Did those happen for a reason? Well, the shooters had their reasons. But is that some universal reason? No. Does the impact and result that followed have to be driven by a reason? Also no.

I think many of the survivors would argue that there was not and could not be a reason for them and their friends, the victims, to have had to endure these events.

Reason is an external locus. And we know this, inherently. That’s why some religious people wave off horrible events as “part of God’s plan.” I think believing that there is a reason, a ‘plan’ makes it easier both to survive and to dismiss horrible events (Why should I change anything if this was God’s plan?).

So the “everything happens for a reason” mentality leads to fatalism, and eventually inaction. Free will is surrendered, ostensibly to ‘God’s Plan’ but realistically to people who are acting out, being proactive in achieving what they desire, consequences be damned.

Now for the contradictory part:

Does that mean that nothing happens for a reason? No, I don’t buy that argument either.

If I hadn’t met my wife, I’d be dead. She was in med school when we met. And as a med student, she had purchased a more expensive “cardiac” stethoscope (who knew there are types of stethoscopes? Not me). She was the first person to hear my heart murmur and push me to have it investigated.

It turned out I’d been living my whole life with a hole in my heart. The hole was getting bigger, and it was past the point when it should’ve been unrecoverable (once the blood flow in your body reverses). Emergency heart surgery was called for, and thus far (6 years) I’ve survived.

It’s hard not to think that I was somehow ‘meant’ to meet her. The circumstances that lead up to our meeting are convoluted and necessitate me living on a variety of continents.

Before she ever heard my heart, I stopped her from electrocuting herself. In a sense, we saved each other. Maybe. It’s easy to believe that. But easy answers are often not the best answers.

So intellectually, no, I don’t believe everything happens for a reason. But emotionally, I feel that some things do happen for a reason.

How do I reconcile that with my belief in free will? It’s a struggle.