Everything happens for a reason.
My reaction used to be something like, “That’s dumb. Things just happen. There’s no grand orchestration going on here.”
Here’s an excerpt from Calvin Rosser’s notes on Awaken the Giant Within:
Calvin’s words inspired a new appreciation for the fact that different religions and flavors of spirituality will often converge on the same psychological shortcuts with meaningful effects on our happiness and our ability to combat the challenges we’re faced with every day.
When someone believes “everything happens for a reason,” they’re getting past the “why is this happening to me?” phase of addressing problems in their life. This mantra gives them strength in the same way that a different flavor of belief would. If you adopted the stoic philosophy of “this is not within my control, so I must not focus on it”, you’re just taking a different path to the same destination.
One may have seen Stutz.
One may then be reminded of The Maze:
Let’s imagine this: each time a person is confronted with a problem, their starting point is at the center of this dark maze. Outside lies the solution to your problem.
{img: overview of maze structure; there is a door at the start that leads directly to the exit}
In this context, such spiritual maxims are keys. They’re keys that unlock the secret door behind your initial spawn point that leads directly to the end The Maze. Without them, you may stumble upon the right way out, but you also may end up going down a long, windy dead-end before realizing the real solution to your problem has nothing to do with the path on which you’ve been exhausting your precious energy.
{img: high-quality MJ image of a locked door with a distinct keyhole in a dark maze}
When someone believes that everything happens for a reason, they’re effectively getting past the “Why is this happening to me?” phase of addressing that problem. This mantra gives them strength in the same way that a different flavor of belief would. For example, if you adopted the stoic philosophy of “This is not within my control, so I must not focus on it”, you’d be taking a different path to the same destination. The keys are of a different flavor, but they all unlock the same door.
{img: Four different keys laid out on a desk. Each has the same ridges but each has a different aesthetic: saintly, karmic, stoic, deterministic, ? — each brandished with their own maxim to answer “Why is this happening to me?”}