Everything happens for a reason

What a Bullshit statement.

Unless you live in a bubble, it doesn’t take long to come face to face with the reality that at least part of every human experience is ugly.

The truth is that regardless of what we try to do about it, bad things are bound to happen in our lives.  And not just regular day to day BS, I mean bad $#!^.  Horrible, unfair, cruel and unjust $#!^.   It will happen. Even the most charmed life ends. We all die.  It sucks, I know.  But there isn’t a single thing you or I can do about it.

Its how we learn to process this that either damns us or defines us.
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As a culture, we don’t do grief.  We don’t want to embrace the raw ugly stuff.   When confronted with a grieving human, most of us become instantly edgy, uncomfortable.  Some of us run the other way, some get super awkward and a lot of us go into fix it mode.

I get it.  When terrible things happen, we feel helpless.  I understand the impulse to try and fix it.   To find something to blame or some explanation in an attempt to somehow make it better.  It seems to me that in the lowest times of our lives, it must be some sort of insane torture to try and find some kind of reason or justification for what we are going through. Really? Who honestly cares why???

Even if we could find a reason for whatever horrific thing that happened – it will never EVER be good enough.  There will NEVER be justification for losing someone we love or witnessing a disaster or for violent and cruel acts against innocent people.   Nothing you can come up with will ever make it better in those moments of despair.  How could it? Any attempt to justify it based on some divine purpose or universal plan is – in my opinion – just complete and utter absurdity.

So then why bother? If shit is going to happen and there will never be a justifiable excuse, what’s the point of all of this?

Only you can figure out your answer for why you keep going.  But keeping going is what matters.

There is not a single good reason why someone we love had to die.  Not one.  So stop looking and let yourself come unhinged.  When you see that shattered person sitting on the floor crying her heart out, let her cry.  There is no need to say or even do anything.  The only cure for in this moment of pure pain is connection; is empathy.  Not justification.  Never blame.

I can promise you one thing.  If you let go and come undone, if you just keep going and move through your own process of dissolution, there will come a moment, however brief, of silence.  Where you will be able to take that one single breath.  It may take hours, weeks, sometimes years.  But in that moment, you will be able to get up off the floor.

There is no justification for your suffering.  But that doesn’t mean that we must suffer in vain.  But what seemed like the greatest losses in my life turned out to be the very things that now fill my days with love and purpose. No, I don’t believe everything happens for a reason. There is simply too much pain and suffering in the world and that excuse feels like a cop out to me.

But I do believe that we can – eventually – find our own personal meaning in everything that happens.  Sometimes we have to go out and make our own meaning out of all the chaos.  Maybe that is how we survive.  We take the worst of human experience and make it matter.  We attempt to make something beautiful out it the ugliest moments of our lives.  Maybe we harness the darkest times and most difficult experiences and transform them into beacons of change.

So grieve my love.  Get ugly.  I beg you, please don’t torture yourself looking for some bullshit answer that could never, ever be enough.  And when you are ready – no matter how long it takes – take a deep breath.  Go and create your own meaning.  Tell your tragedy that you will not give into fear.  Find the love in your suffering.  Its there,