“Everything happens for a reason.”
I've always hated that phrase. It’s
a phrase often offered up as a comfort to people when bad things happen. It’s a
way of finding the silver lining in things, finding the good in bad situations.
It’s meant to make people feel better. Yes, this hurts, but you’ll grow from it.
You’ll become a better person. It’ll all work out in the end.
I can
see that idea being comforting to someone whose boyfriend or girlfriend has
just broken up with them, or to someone who didn't get that part in the play
they wanted, or that promotion they were after. I can see everything having a
reason being comforting to someone in that kind of a situation. Those are the
kinds of things that are more easily dealt with. But what about situations that
involve death? What about situations like the Boston Marathon, or the numerous
shootings that have happened? Were those for a reason?
If I were to operate under that
mindset, that everything that happens has a reason, that would mean that
there’s a reason there are people living on the streets. That would mean that
there’s a reason that people are starving. There’s a reason that children die.
Along with that idea that
everything happens for a reason comes the idea that, if you’re a religious
person, there’s some lesson from God in the bad things. There is a lesson
hidden in every bad experience, and if we look hard enough, we can find it.
There was no message in the bombs
in Boston. There was no message in the shooting in Newtown. There was no
message on September 11, 2001. There was only senseless, meaningless death and
violence.
To me, that kind of mindset,
that idea that everything has a reason and an intended lesson, is an insult to
the people who died in these events. That’s devaluing their lives. That little boy,
that eight year old boy who died at the Boston Marathon, did not lose his life
so that someone else could learn a lesson. His life was worth so much more than
that. He was not killed so that God could send a message to someone else. He
died because there are cruel people in the world. He died because sometimes bad
things just happen.
That’s
a more comforting thought, for me. That there are bad people in the world, and
sometimes they do bad things, and sometimes we can’t stop it.
That’s a lot less frightening.
