Life happens - for a reason?
when someone says everything happens for a reason - what do they mean, what follows and where does it come from?
Photo: Colin McGloin
“Everything happens for a reason" is a phrase often thrown in the face of people experiencing adversity. Whether it's rooted in Catholic guilt, karma, or toxic positivity, the notion that even the most devastating tragedies serve a greater purpose can be far from comforting, especially when we're in the midst of pain and despair. In this article, we will delve into the complexities of this idea, exploring when it falls short, when it can be acceptable, and the underlying reasons behind its prevalence.
Charles Stanley once said “you may wonder why a certain tragedy had to happen but you need never doubt the goodness of God's sovereign will. He sees the beginning and the end of your life and only he can transform your tragedies into something of lasting value”, and he was dead wrong.
If someone is going through hard times you should offer them support, listen to them and encourage them to seek more help if necessary. What you shouldn’t do is say everything happens for a reason, when you do this you invalidate the person's feelings in the moment, and make them feel guilty for something they had no control over. The just world fallacy is the idea that the world gives people what is coming to them, but sadly this isn’t always the case. The belief in this idea leads to the following logic: “if everything happens for a reason, then this tragedy is god punishing me”. There is both an invalidation, and a blaming that occurs when you say everything happens for a reason. Either the reason is positive and you should stop crying about it or it is negative and you are being punished for being a bad person. According to research published in the HHS, when suppressed, Negative emotions remain unchanged while positive emotions are diminished. (Srivstava et. al, 2014)
That being said, in a previous article “Crisis, growth and storytelling: learning from adversity” I discussed the power of finding meaning in struggle and story in pain. These points still remain. If YOU as an individual can find a silver lining after allowing negative emotions in and letting them pass then there can be some truth to the idea. However there wasn’t a preordained reason, it is more of a post hoc construction to understand what happened and why.
“Nothing ever ends poetically. It ends and we turn it into poetry. All that blood was never once beautiful, it was just red.” -Kait Rokowski
As stated in that article, turning blood into poetry was a coping strategy that I used to deal with tough times, but one should not delude oneself into thinking that the blood itself was beautiful. If you can make something beautiful out of it, then good on you but that isn’t always possible, there is a great deal of pain in life denying its existence will only cause suffering.
But why does this bad idea replicate? It has something to do with the way we humans think about our past. You will hear things like “(tragedy X) was the best thing that ever happened to me!” and hey if that helps you great, but that often isn’t really the case. This happens because of a few biases, one of them being Hindsight bias; “Hindsight bias refers to the tendency to perceive past events as more predictable than they actually were (Roese & Vohs, 2012).”. They will say something like “oh ya it sucks that it happened but I knew it would work out in the end” (no they didn't they just think they do.) Consistency bias also plays a role where people believe that their beliefs have been more consistent than in actuality. “Even then I didn’t feel too bad about tragedy X happening”. This isn’t the case, they are projecting their current feeilings onto that past event. Overall I would describe the process as follows: Everything happens, that puts us on the path we are on, we find our way to a happy life and we wouldn't trade it for the world. Forcing the end result of happiness on people just forced into a new path is unhelpful.
Going back to what I talked about in my last article on the topic:
“Life is going to hit you with a brick in the head, sometimes there is a message attached, read it.”
Everything happens- that’s for sure but the reason we find is a post hoc rationalization, the message on the brick is if present, personal and to be discovered by the person in pain. If something can be taken from a bad situation that is great. That doesn’t make the brick good, it still hits you in the head. You definitely shouldn’t explain to someone why the brick is good when they haven’t had the chance to read the message.
Better vibes exercise:
The RAIN method of dealing with negative emotions:
Recognize- you are dealing with tough emotions
Allow- the negative emotions in metaphorically tilt your face up and allow the rain to hit your cheeks
Investigate- with kindness. What is causing me to feel this emotion?
Non-identification- i am feeling an emotion, I am not that Emotion, (so you aren’t a sad person you are just sad right now) allow it to pass
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11031-019-09774-w#Tab2