Things Happen for a Reason...

I'm not a big fan of that way of thinking. Things happen because we make choices. Many times, the choices we make are obvious, other times, they are hidden amid our daily lives. There are always choices.

Always.

When we fall back on "Things happen for a reason" it both takes away our involvement in the process. It make us blameless when things go badly, and at the same time it takes away the credit when things go well. Applying the THFAR mentality, clearly it wasn't your own decision to take the more difficult path, so when you succeed, it can't be because you made it that way... it's because of someone else.

So many times, the choices we have are not between a great one and a terrible one, but among several terrible ones. Deciding which of them is the least terrible, and which one might lead to the best possible chance of having a better choice in the next round?  It's up to us. Maybe it's lack of blind faith in the controlling divine, maybe it's my own belief that divinity starts within each of us, or maybe I'm just being a curmudgeon, but I believe that in every case, we are ultimately responsible for our own lives.

I wasn't always this way. I spent so much of my life neither taking the blame nor the credit for my own decisions. It MUST have been 'meant to be', right? My first girlfriend and I were 'meant to be' and that ended badly too many years later. My career choices early on were 'meant to be', as were the choices I made over education, vehicles, living arrangements... so many parts of my life were simply 'meant to be' that when bad things happened, they must have happened for a reason, right? All part of the big plan, I guessed.

But somehow, I came to realize that I was in a bad emotional situation not because it was meant to be, but rather that I made choices in my life that led me to that place.  I made personal choices to remain silent, to be bitter rather than be honest about how certain actions made me feel. I made choices every day - many of them were the same choice - to remain in the current situation or to continue to o nothing to improve my own mental, emotional, or physical well-being.  When I was unhappy with my job, I made a choice to enter into an arrangement that I believed would allow me to return to go to school and complete my degree. I relied on others for my own personal success. No more of that.  These days, I try to make decisions that will better my life. Decisions that will hopefully better the lives of those I am attached to. I try to be the best father I can be. I try to be the best partner I can be to the women I love. I try to be more attentive as a son, and as a brother. An uncle, and a friend.

Things happening for a reason? No. Unless that reason is that I made the choice, or my actions led to the result.  I won't see it any other way.

Not anymore.