Does Everything Happen for a Reason?

[Jayar]

I'll tell you what sparked this question...

 

I was in a relationship with my ex (let's call him Jamie) up until about 2 and a half months ago that I thought was going to lead into marriage. About a year PRIOR to meeting my ex, I was being pursued by an awesomely good looking, caring, smart guy in one of my college classes (let's call him Steve). I really LIKED Steve a lot and I tried to be "into" him like he was me (and he was, he pursued relentlessly for an entire semester). But it just wasn't going to happen. Then I met my ex, Jamie, and dated him for 2.5 years. Now THIS happens ("this" being my extremely non-mutual split).

 

I can't help but wonder if I simply wasn't MEANT to be with Steve because then I wouldn't have met and dated Jamie and thereforeeeE I wouldn't have been single now for.... well.... I guess I haven't really discovered the reasoning for THAT yet.

 

But seriously, do things happen for a reason, or do we just find reason with things that happen in retrospect, once they've already happened? My parents are both Hungarian. They met in Canada. My dad was my mom's sister's boyfriend's best friend. And shortly after meeting they stopped being friends and now we don't really speak to that side of the family (my mom's sister DID end up marrying my dad's friend). So was my dad's friendship just a catalyst for my parents' meeting?

 

Or how about the time my parents ALMOST bought a 100-acre property for "farm land" price but couldn't afford it... By about $10,000. Then someone else bought it and a golf course went in accross the street, and the property sold for about $10M two years later. My parents (and my brother and I) would have been rich. Set for life. But then we'd have gone to private school. And would we really have had the same kind of life? Maybe we weren't meant to be rich, privately schooled, and snobbish?

 

What about people who meet in line while at Starbucks? Or when your dog runs up to some random guy in the park, and you find out 5 years later on your wedding day that he's the one? Is that all chance? Or is that the way it's meant to work out? What do you believe?

[Scout]

I believe that every single thing that happens to us in life is a result of actions made by us and others. But at the same time, I do believe in a Higher Force that can guide us if we listen.

[shes2smart]

I've been keeping a journal since I was 12 (1977, just so you don't have to do the math.)

 

As I look back at it, I can see that everything's always worked out for my highest good.

 

There were things I wanted and didn't get...and while I was very disappointed at the time...something that was better for me always came along. Sometimes the "better for me" situation or person or circumstance was something I'd never have thought to create/pursue on my own.

 

Quick example: dated a guy briefly, he dumped me, I thought he was the great one who got away. 2 years later, I end up working with the gal he met shortly after he dumped me and who he ended up marrying. a year after that, she came to work crying about how he was cheating on her and she was going to divorce him.

 

All of a sudden, he went from being "the great one who got away" to "I'm damn lucky I dodged that bullet."

 

Ever since then, I have had an unshakeable faith in 2 things:

 

1. I am one of God's favorites.*

2. Everything always works out for my highest good. **

 

*When I say this to people I've recently met, they think I'm either being sarcastic or I'm incredibly arrogant. After they've known me for a while, even they have to admit that things always seem to have a way of working out for me.

 

**"Highest good" is not necessarily "immediate good." But I firmly believe "highest good" is the underlying reason for everything we are presented with in life. Sometimes we're focusing too much on what's immediately in front of us that we lose the big picture. If we don't bother to keep some sort of record of what's gone on in our lives (and look back at it from time to time), it will be much harder to see the patterns in the larger picture, so what goes on will seem to be just a random series of events with no rhyme, reason or purpose.

[Beyondthesea]

No matter where we go, no matter what we do, we are attracting everything into our reality (law of attraction).

 

I believe in fate, destiny, and all those things we think are only chance or coincidence are never that.

 

Many blessings

[Haven]

To say that things happen for a reason implies that there's a purpose to all this. So what's the purpose? Why would there be a higher power dictating the actions and fates of billions of people? And if so, why would the higher power be so unintelligent about it? I mean, generally when people say that "everything happens for a reason," what they're really saying is, "Something bad happened to me, but it needed to happen because it allowed something better to happen, which ended up with my ultimately being happier." So it seems that people think the purpose of the entire universe is to make sure that we're all happy. So why does the universe suck so much at doing it? Millions of people are starving and dying, is there a reason for any of that? There are so many people who die without ever really being in love, or having a good life. What's the purpose of that? If everything really does "happen for a reason," then what's the reason for AIDs? What's the reason for murder, for disease, for random planets and stars spinning around in space? What's the reason for all that?

[Kevin T]

Yes, things happen for a reason.

 

Without getting all religious on everybody, I tend to think it works more along the lines of what the Bible says in Romans 8:28 (I think):

 

"Everything works for good of those who are called according to purpose."

 

People suffer because of other people, evil out there and circumstances. But if people trust in a "Higher Power", then perhaps they can receive some form of divine guidance to aid them along the way. Did that make any sense? lol

 

BTW, shes2smart, as much as people may disdain you for saying what you did about being one of "God's favorites" bear in mind that the Bible would seem to agree with you, since the word used for 'elect' actually means 'favorite'in Greek, meaning even God has favorites. But there's no reason why people can't go around believing they are God's favorite. After all, isn't EVERYONE different and special in their own way, thus making everyone a "favorite"? I think so.

[Ipso Fracto Man]

You can FIND a reason in everything that happens if you want one. In the end, isn't that all that matters?

[shes2smart]

You can FIND a reason in everything that happens if you want one. In the end, isn't that all that matters?

 

Yup.

 

It can all have a reason, purpose and a wonderfully intricate design...or it can be a random series of events that make no sense whatsoever and then we all die in the end for no reason at all.

 

I can't see the really big picture....you know, the one that includes all the details of why babies die and why some very evil folks are allowed to live to a ripe old age. I don't think any one person can see that big picture. (Although these folks have some rather bitterly humorous twists on things, proving that you can mix your pessimism with humor and make a few bucks in the process... link removed )

 

However, I do know that people will tend to live their lives very differently and have differing degrees of satisfaction with their lives depending on which outlook they choose to have.

 

Ain't free will grand?

[PaulMn]

A lot of people want to believe everything happens for a reason. Maybe they are right, and maybe they are wrong. I hope they're right.

 

What we can try to do, is to make sure that the things that we do happen for a reason, for some worthwhile purpose. Then we can look back and say "that happened for a reason - because it was the right thing to do and I chose to do it".

[RayKay]

I am not so much someone whom says "everything happens for a reason", because honestly there are times people have said that to me when truly it was honestly a horrible thing to say...well intended maybe but extremely inappropriate. There is no "reason" for the sudden death of a loved one for example.

 

That being said, I believe you can FIND a reason to make the best of everything that happens to you - to learn and to grow from the experience even those that are the most painful. Maybe the term relates less to there being a "reason for it happening" as it does to it being a reason for you to make changes, or decisions or to take the opportunity and do what you can with it.

[Juliana]

No. Everything doesn't happen for a reason. Horrible things happen to innocent children.

 

That said, yes, all things can demonstrate the infinite glory of God, or the will of the universe, or whathaveyou, if you don't just roll over and give up, but you keep trying to be true to your own self and don't get fixated on having a particular result.

 

We live in a chaotic universe where not everyone understands how they should act or who they truly are, and so they do destructive things, to themselves, and to other people. They rob the world of their contribution and themselves of the happiness they might have. And we all are guilty of this to some extent, but if we have faith that there is real good that can be done, and real truth to discover, we can still manage to bring some good out of the disparate elements of our lives; we can live in such a way that all things do seem to conspire together for our happiness. We are all God's favourites, in that sense.

[rocio]

Yes, I think everything happens for a reason.