One of those chliché statements that used to really flip my switch was the one that responds to bad things that happen with, "There's a reason why this has happened." This used to be the most condescending of all clichés...that is, until I felt the truth of these words in my own life.
There IS a reason why everything happens!
When a person is killed by a drunk driver, the reason why that happened was because some person chose to drink themselves drunk, then chose to drive their vehicle while drunk. THAT's the reason why the person was killed. For every single event that happens-- good OR bad--there is a cause and effect reason to explain why something actually happened. Every single time...every single event...there IS a reason why something happens.
The cause and effect reason why something happens is objective, logical, and forensically fact-based.
But the cause and effect reason why something happened isn't what people mean when they say "Everything happens for a reason." They mean that there is some deeper purpose, a divine (God plan or Universe intervention) purpose that sheds light on the true reason, and explains the real reason why something happened. Hence, this cliché becomes the spiritual raison d'être to the cause and effect reason for why something happened.
This spiritual reason is completely subjective, belief-based, and open to an infinite number of interpretations, depending upon how each person makes sense of what has happened.
So there is a reason why something happened...an objective cause and effect reason based on facts...but also a subjective spiritual reason based on a person's beliefs that shapes and informs the way the objective facts are interpreted through an individual's meaning-making system.
I am remembering back to a very powerful experience, a night when I was unsuspectingly driving home from Claremont. And as I started up the overpass freeway interchange, there was an "accident" that had just happened. The cause and effect reason for the accident was a man (for whatever reason of his own) jumped onto an innocent random car. The woman driving that car didn't hit the man...he had jumped into her path to cause the collision...he was the reason why his body smashed into her car.
I drove up just after this had happened, so I stopped to help. And just as I was about to put a blanket onto the poor man lying on cold asphalt, the police arrived, so I was able to stay with the woman until the first responders had finished helping the man (so they could, then, attend to her).
The woman knew very clearly the objective fact that this man had jumped onto her car...but the subjective meaning that she chose to ascribe to the deeper reason as to why this had happened to her was that there was a reason why he had chosen her. In her experience, this wasn't a random act of chaos...there was a deeper, spiritual reason why this man had chosen her, and she wasn't going to move beyond this point until she could find the answer to why he had chosen her.
This wasn't the only conclusion to be drawn as explanation for why this had happened to her. But it was the conclusion that her personal meaning making system had chosen...and it was a choice.
So, there is a reason why something happened...an unchangeable reason that we can all agree upon...and there is also a reason that each person chooses for themselves, a reason that creates meaning for the mind, and changes over time as our perspective changes with new experiences that help us to understand from new and mysterious vantage points.
I love the unique ways that each person finds and creates along the way to make personal meaning for the good, the bad, and the ugly that happens to us...it is the Grace that allows us to heal and move past the tragic events that impose themselves onto our unsuspecting life stories...sometimes for random cause and effect reasons...and sometimes for intentions of a dark and twisted plot of another person's story...but always beautiful in the way we thread the pieces together.
