We humans, being the rational and reasoning creatures we
think we are, are inclined to look for—and
even read—meaning
into events that happen to us. Less cognizant animals take what comes along and
deal with it as best they can—without
examining and probing it, or seeking explanations for why it happened. When a
hawk attacks a songbird, the little critter does not fret over why he’s being assaulted, or
if he is being punished for some transgression he recently committed—he just responds and
tries to get the hell out of the way.
Our ability to generate an understanding of the cause and
nature of events has given us a huge advantage over all other creatures on this
planet. It allows us to learn and to come to comprehend our world like no other
being. It has allowed us to become as successful and dominant a species as we
are.
Yet this inclination to seek meaning in things also leads us
to experience much angst and suffering; as well as leads us astray, when we err
in our attempts to explain events. We read things into experiences when often
there is no explanation for why they
happened. We’re
uncomfortable not knowing why
something occurred, so we make up reasons. We want to believe in continuity—we want to see
coherence in life, we want there to be purpose to things. We want to feel that
we are in control of our lives or that a greater power is leading us, so things
that happen do so for a reason.
If we can’t
explain the cause for an incident, we will look to something or someone else to
describe its message. We seek out a wise person or a guru who can pronounce why
it happened. Some of us reason that God has a plan and thus caused this thing
to happen, even though we can’t
grasp why. We might simply conclude that “God works in mysterious ways,” or that the meaning will come to us in the future.
Hang in there, have faith…
the reason will soon become clear.
The truth is that most of the things that happen to us are not predetermined, nor do they arise
because they were the logical result of some earlier event, nor is there a
reason for them. Despite our tendency to look for causal relationships and
continuity between the past and the present, most occurrences are really
coincidental in nature. There simply is no way to foresee them happening. There
are so many forces operating beyond our comprehension or control that are at
play in our lives, that we can’t
begin to know what they are or what they do.
More meaning next time…
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