Everything Happens for a Reason – Or Does It?
By
in
How many times have you heard someone say, “everything happens for a reason”? Maybe you had a loved one get into a car accident and thought of that phrase. Maybe some other tragedy happened within your family or within the world. You might think that it happened for some reason, whether spiritual or natural. I believe that some things are done for a reason. There’s a reason you get an education; to try to get into a good career in your future. There’s a reason you exercise; to keep your body healthy. But does everything happen for a reason?? If everything happened for a reason, why is there such thing as “chance” and “luck”?
Every action has a reaction
Everything that we do has some sort of reaction. This reaction could be physical. If you throw something up in the air, the natural reaction is for it come back down. The reaction could also be meaningful for indirect. If you see someone drop what they are carrying, a good reaction is that you would (hopefully) take a little time to help that person, or any person in need. Let’s take the someone-dropping-stuff example. If you’re walking down the street and carrying an armful of books and you trip and they go flying out of your hand, did that necessarily happen for a reason? Or did it just happen and there was no reason? There were just good things that came out of it.
Take something much, much bigger like the September 11th terrorist attacks. Some might believe that the attacks happened for a reason. Well, they did. The terrorists had some sort of reason behind the attack, but that reason was malicious. But some believe that they might have happened for a different reason. Stop and think about that for a second. Do you think that such terrible, horrible atrocities happen for a specific reason, or do things just happen because God lets them, and various good comes of it?
We can choose to make good or bad of situations
What if absolutely not one single person came to the aid of the Haiti earthquake victims? That would never happen of course, but what if it did? Did that earthquake happen for a reason? Earthquakes have been happening since the beginning of earth. Which means that they have been happening for a long, long time. Well before human beings were around. And earthquakes will continue to happen until the end of the world. But if nobody came to the victims’ help, would you say there was a reason behind the earthquake? I happen to believe that when good or bad things happen, there is some sort of reaction that follows, but not necessarily a reason. That’s just me. But the reason I’m writing about this is because I want to give people a different perspective on things and help you to think about these things. Thinking about these things help us to learn more about ourselves and each other.
When I was in school, there were plenty of tests that I failed and plenty that I did well on. There was a reason behind me doing either poorly or well on them. It was because I studied hard, or I didn’t. If I did poorly on a test, I made the best that I could of that situation. I made sure that I studied harder next time. It helped me to realize that I needed to do something different. But I don’t really believe I did poorly on that test for that (or any other) reason. It just so happened that I didn’t study hard enough so the reaction was me doing poorly. I could choose to not study next time and do poorly yet again.
What about luck or chance?
If you’re with your friends deciding between two places to eat, you might flip a coin to help you decide. So you flip the coin and it lands on heads and heads is for Pizza Hut. So you all go to Pizza Hut because the coin flip helped you decide. Did that coin land on heads to lead you to Pizza Hut for a reason? Perhaps you happen to be there at the same time a long-lost relative is there and you find out you’re related. Or perhaps the outing is event-less and you just go about your normal business conversing and eating. Which brings me to ask, does everything happen for a reason? Or do things happen and we just make the best of what comes of it? There may be instances where God guides certain situations to happen for a higher reason that we may not even know of. But we still have our free will to choose what to do with that situation.
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Whether you believe in this phrase or not is completely up to you. I’m just here to give a different perspective on things. Thinking about situations differently helps us to grow and open our minds. But maybe you stick to the phrase and believe in it with your all your mind. Or maybe you became a little more flexible after reading this and might realize something. Again, it’s your call. Maybe you came across this post for a reason, or maybe you just happen to find it, and you choose what to make of it… 
