How was that for an impressive title?

Actually, I'm sitting here with the lamp on -- a warm glow in the room -- sipping on honey lemon tea.  I've got my PJs on, the TV is off, and all I can hear is the laptop fan humming away.  I find that drinking tea in your pajamas is a pretty good way to be pensive about something or another.  It helps if all of your friends have finally signed off, and you've already looked at all the websites you look at ad nauseum.

What am I so busy thinking about, you ask?  Even if you didn't, I'm going to answer.  This is my blog, after all.

Just a comment made earlier today.  Life gets rough sometimes.  For somepeople, life kicks you in the pants with a little extra vigor.  It straps on a particularly pointy pair of stilettos.  When this occurs, one often grasps at the great unknown for answers, or at the very least a decent consolation prize.  Not the crap you get at Chucky Cheese for five tickets, but the really good stuff they keep on the shelves behind them.  They come up with "everything is for a reason."  Whoa.  That's potent stuff.  But a 10,000-ticket item it is not.

It's always been like that, though.  When humans were confined to caves, nothing but a fire and a spear to sustain life, something like a flash of lightning or the crack of thunder or the dancing aurorae or shooting stars must have seemed unexplainable -- mystical.  To answer their questions, they too reached into that great unknown.  What they pulled out was a whole pantheon of answers.  Vengeful gods and lust-driven deities.  What science could not answer, mysticism did.

But humans couldn't dwell in such darkness for long.  Over the years, the progress of science squelched the role of these gods and they were replaced by the new gods of technology: the internet, the television, modern medicine, Jerry Springer.  But no one truly believes in them.  We all know them to exist (Except for Springer.  I've never actually seen him myself.), but no one needs them to fill the chasm of uncertainty in their minds.

We've got new questions now.  Why are the amounts of matter and antimatter in the obervable universe asymmetric?  What is the key to quantum gravity?  How unique is life, and can it be recreated?

We've got some of the old questions, too.  What happens after death?  How has the universe come to be as we now see it?  What is the nature of life, and what is its purpose?

Do we see a difference between these two groups?  Science has eliminated the need for magic in the natural world.  It seems to suggest that even these new questions that we've created will be or can be answered, given time and the proper tools.  It also suggests that the others can't and will never be.

Why, then, would someone assume that events that transpire in the waking world should be the matter of some grand puppet-master above us all.  Why must all things have a purpose, a reason for occuring?  Why can't bad things simply be bad, and good things good without having to be connected to a cosmic road map of some kind.

Is it a throwback to our cave-dwelling days?  Is it a refusal to acknowledge that God (should he exist or not is your own decision) is not present in everyday occurrences?  I admit that God may very well exist, but can't you admit that you also might not?

Or is the thought too scary?  Maybe the concept of free-will is too frightening.  After all, we'd be out here all by ourselves, trying to feel our way through the darkness.  No reason, no purpose, no master plan.  But can't that also be a liberating feeling?  Life is not just a series of events, one leading to the next, a to b to c -- each a required and meaningful step for the next.  Instead we are all scrambling to do what we can in an arbitrarily small time.  The caveman could not stay in the cave forever; progress and enlightenment would never allow it. 

Call me an existentialist, or a fatalist, or a realist.  Whatever.  But it all comes down to this: Sometimes crap happens, but sometimes truly wonderful things happen. Isn't it even more beautiful to think that such grace could come without strings?

 

I would have to say that people say things happen for a reason in order to explain why what is happening to them is happening to them. good or bad. I mean think back to 9/11. There were many people that were supposed to be at work but were otherwise hung up because of things out of their control...it is hard for them not to believe that someone or something was watching out for them. How many times have I sat at a red light and have quickly accelrated through an intersection when the light turns green and those few times I have hesitated for any reason, someone has gone barrelling through a red light...It is hard not to believe that things happen for a reason...of course then you could just say that life is just a serious of coincidences, you win some you lose some It all depends on your beliefs...and there is no right or wrong about it....
Some people just need those unanswered questions, answered...it is the control freak in humans...the need and want to be right and feel the need to have an answer for everything.

It is the whole getting mad at your parents for saying "Because I said So" Theory That isn't good enough for many.

I agree with a lot of what Sara said.

I think a lot of it depends on the type of person you are. I'm not a spiritual person myself. My own beliefs are quite a combination of things, but I don't necessarily believe there's a God, or whatever.

In fact, I think personal experience and how you deal with them has a huge impact on whether you believe if everything happens for a reason or not. For me, I am a goal-orientated person. When I am myself, I am extremely optimistic about things. Therefore, I strive to have reasons - it's almost like it's my hope for things, good or bad. Especially, when it came to something like my brother.

If you aren't as hopeful as I am, maybe you just don't look at things that way. Does that make any sense? Maybe it's just a more realistic way of seeing the world (not saying I'm realistic, that's why I chose the word hopeful instead).

I don't think everyone strives to have a reason, but I think it drives quite a few people. I don't look for reasons for everything, but a lot of things come to my attention - without me looking for it.

I don't know, just my opinion! This is one of the reasons I love being friends with you. On stuff like this, we have such a different view on stuff, and it's interesting hearing someone's outlook.