There's always that person.
You get laid off, or dumped, or the scan comes back wrong, and someone trying to be helpful says:
"Everything happens for a reason."
And you want to slap them.
Of course you do.
I'm also that person who's like, what is the freaking reason?!?!?
And yet, I do believe that everything happens for a reason.
But the why is a pointless question.
Because when you try to answer it, you tend to find a verdict instead of a reason.
I get fired, and the reason is: I'm a loser, I suck at my job, I'll never work again.
I get dumped, and the reason is: I'm unlovable, it's obviously me.
I get sick, and the reason is: I must have not taken good enough care of myself.
Some people are wired the other way. Something falls apart and they shrug and say well, that's life and go make a sandwich. If you’re one of those people, genuinely, good for you.
I'm at a point now where I'm honestly delusional about how positively I read my own story. I assume things work out in my favor. That is a skill I built. It is not where I started, and it's not where most of us start.
And on a bigger scale, it's worse.
The same “reason” gets given to the woman whose hours got cut, the family whose mom got sick, and everyone currently being crushed by something enormous they did not build and cannot outrun.
That's the spiritual internet's favorite move, and it's bullshit. Life is not a linear spiritual meritocracy. Sometimes the reason is just power, money, and systems that were never built for your thriving.
Chasing the reason there doesn't give you anything to work with either. It just adds shame to the injury.
Here's what I do know.
Every time I didn't get the job. Every time I got dumped. Every time I got sick. Every time I went through something negative.
It led me to the exact point I'm at right now.
I am who I am today because of every single experience I've had in the past.
Not some of them. Every single one.
And today I can either be feeling like, hey, this is kind of cool, I'ma dig it, I'm gonna enjoy my life, I've got something going on that's really excellent, good for me.
Or I can be feeling like, you know what, there's this one thing that's really freaking annoying and I don't like it and I want it gone out of my life.
And if that's where I'm at, fine. But I have to actually admit the thing is there. There's no reason I have to live with my circumstances the way they are. I can change them.
And if it's really hard, that's what magic is for.
But what is right now is a product of everything that's been in the past. And when I'm clear about that, when I'm aligned with my current reality, everything that's happened in the past all of a sudden becomes irrelevant.
Because it led me to here.
And here I can start over. Here I can choose differently. Here I can act, and think, and behave, and feel in a way that changes the whole thing.
Here, in this moment of reality is where I have all the power. All the choice. All the magic.
And that can totally transform my life.
So do I believe everything shitty happens for a reason?
I actually kind of do. I also think it's a stupid-ass thing to say to somebody who's going through a hard time.
Instead of: everything happens for a reason.
Maybe think: everything that happened was necessary to get me exactly here.
And I would even say: Everything that happened was necessary so that I could be the freaking fantastic badass powerhouse that I am today.
Now, what do I want from here?
That's the actual question. Not why it happened. What do you want from here?