I choose to believe that everything means something.
Because of this, the cornerstone of my entire belief structure is that nothing occurs by chance and everything turns out exactly how it was meant to be in the end. This is not always an easy things to put your faith in, however. When misfortune strikes... when something goes terribly wrong... when people are suffering... it's difficult to take it on faith that this is the way it's supposed to be. That everything will work itself out in the end. And yet, there's some comfort to be found when you believe that even tragedy will ultimately lead us to where we need to be.
Some people feel this is fate or destiny. Others attribute it to God's will. Still others feel it is a lesson designed to teach you something for your next life. And some just think The Universe has a way of sorting things out. Regardless, it's certainly a kinder way of dealing with adversity than believing tragedy happens for no reason at all. Because if all the world's suffering is for nothing, that would make life almost unbearable, wouldn't it?
Sure there are some lazy, self-involved assholes who use this as an excuse to stand idly by, ignore people in need, and let the world go to hell, but this does not deter me. Even politicians are here for a reason.
Sometimes I think that reason is so that I have somebody to despise, but that's okay too.
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While I don’t believe in any sort of fate, I don’t think that’s the same thing as believing that tragedy happens for no reason. At least, not generally. Certainly, I believe that tragedy *can* happen for no reason, just not that it usually does.
A small meteor could really ruin someone’s day and that would qualify as “for no reason”. Most tragedies, on the other hand, have pretty clear causes even if their victims aren’t related to those causes. Or, even when the specific causes aren’t all that clear, we still recognized that there *are* causes, just complicated ones.
I do believe in a subset of Karma, but probably not in the way that most believers do. If someone consistently chooses “to stand idly by, ignore people in need, and let the world go to hell”, then when they encounter their own statistically likely time of need, they are much less likely to have a working support system.
My reaction to an uncaring universe is to understand that it is up to us to make it a caring universe, assuming that’s what we want. Sadly, other than attempting not to make things worse, I’ve done very little in this regard. I toy with the idea of changing that, but it’s clearly not a high enough priority for me. Yet.
And that pretty much sums it up! I to am currently in the “trying not to make things worse” camp myself, but as every day passes and things just look more bleak to me, I want so badly to be a person who fights to make things better. But overcoming the hopeless feeling I get when seeing just how big the problems are is no easy task.
You could take comfort in the progress that has been made. I’d argue that most of the negatives we observe are only relatively negative. It’s only because of all of the progress that we even notice them.