everything happens for a reason

Newton’s third law states: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. I know that this is a law of motion, but doesn’t it seem like it is a law of intangibles as well? For every action, word or thought, there is an equal consequence…at least that is what the whole world conspires to tell you about life from the time you are a small child, maybe even from the time you are born…good guy always wins, good things come to those that wait, those that work hard find success, those that don’t play fair will be punished, etc.

Sometimes when life’s blows seem a little too hard or too frequent I can’t help but wonder, “what did I ever do to deserve this?” What action, thought or word of mine merits this extreme consequence? This past weekend was another tough one for me as I was nauseated beyond belief, dizzy and exhausted, and cut my date to dinner with dave short because I couldn’t handle the sight of food. Life is so very taxing right now but I keep moving forward, even though it seems I am on a backwards escalator and all moving forward does is keep me from falling further down below. One of the “inspirational” quotes that I find most bothersome is this: “Everything happens for a reason.” Who came up with this one? And more importantly, why did it stick? As human beings, we want to believe that there is a purpose for everything because we can’t stand the idea that life could really be so random and cruel. There isn’t a cosmic reason for everything. We try to make sense of loss and pain because then we have a way to grasp it and can control, at least in part, our response. We tell the story to ourselves in a way that makes it easy to digest, giving it that spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down…we can’t handle the fact that life is harsh and cruel and sometimes, there is no explanation.