It’s a common sentiment: everything happens for a reason. It’s meant to be reassuring, and profound, and empowering but quite frankly if someone had said it to me after my baby died I would have punched them in the face (maybe not actually but you get my drift). The problem with such sentiments is that to a precise mind, it presents as simplistic and incapable of accounting for all circumstances. Or more specifically MY circumstances.
When going through dark times it is easy to become self indulgent and all consumed by our experience. It’s a natural and understandable response. However, there is a time where we need to step back from our turmoil and step into our personal growth.
Sometimes things happen for no good reason. End of Story.
But no matter how horrific an experience, how senseless and tragic an event in our lives is, we can learn from it and grow. Sometimes it is an excruciatingly painful growth but growth nonetheless.
Although each person will take their own time learning life lessons from confronting challenges in life, and in the case of grief there is no timeline to follow, I personally found it reassuring to observe myself and others and take lessons from what is a never ending process.
I believe in life long learning, I believe that life is a continual process of growth and development, and I believe that every experience teaches us something about ourselves, others, or life in general. I also believe that life is neutral, full of experiences that we determine to be good or bad.
So while we encounter challenging times and experiences in life that in hindsight we regard as “happening for a reason” in order to take us in a better direction, E.G. the relationship breakdown that leads to meeting the love of your life or the redundancy that leads to your dream job, there will be times where as an explanation “happening for a reason” is a hollow and bitter sentiment. In those times know that sometimes there is no good reason but there is nevertheless an opportunity to grow as a person.