Everything Happens for a Reason?

I meant for that to be a rhetorical question. On the other hand, Kate Bowler, a professor at Duke University Divinity School made that a title of her memoir, without the question mark – just a plain declaration. Her personal story is about how she is coping with her illness. She is a young mother with a successful career and as I listened to her interview, her voice was active and gregarious and as far as anyone can tell she is full of positive energy, which belie that she has stage IV colon cancer that was diagnosed not too long ago. Her book is about that and everything else in her life, her family, her career and the future. She is still dealing with the cancer from the day she was told about it. She is being philosophical without asking but rather declaring that what happened to her must have a reason, which she continues to explore and expound on.

“Long Haul Trucker” is another personal memoir by Finn Murphy whose interview I also listened to. Finn Murphy is one of eight children brought up by Irish Catholic parents. Their mother was a strict disciplinarian (who wouldn’t be with those many children to keep in line, the author said). After Catholic high school Finn went to college but dropped out after his junior year to become a long haul driver for a moving company where he had summer jobs before, which was what captivated him to that line of work. What Finn did not mention in his book was that his father was the illustrator for the comic strip Prince Valiant and Big Ben Bolt published since the 50’s. His father who did not go to college wanted it for all his children, so he was disappointed that Finn quit after three years.  Finn earned good money. He was not the typical long haul trucker, did not look like one, and definitely did not talk like one. He is articulate and does not try to hide his New England manner of speaking. His memoir had a lot to say about the high end clients he served (moving household goods of executives and millionaires) and all the different kinds of drivers and travelers he encountered on the road, including fellow long haul drivers, with humorous foot notes and poignant commentaries.

However, there was a long gap in his memoir - ten years that were not discussed in his book. It was during the interview that he opened up about those years. After earning and saving enough money he fulfilled his plan in life, which was to go into business.  He purchased a company that imported sweaters from Ireland to re-sell to the U.S. and later other textile products from Scotland. He was very successful and by that time he had a home in Nantucket Island, married and had a family. He was a pillar in the community and held several positions in the local government. Then he revealed that he “got into a relationship with a woman who wasn't my wife”. When asked how that turned out, he, sounding remorseful, said, “And my life exploded. Or probably more accurately, I took a match to my life and blew it to pieces”. Those were his exact words. After the divorce he left the island. He sort of exiled himself.

He kept his professional big rig driver’s license up to date all that time and after what could have been some serious soul searching he moved to Colorado and became a long haul truck driver again – to this day. He will write another book which would be about the missing chapters that would cover life in Nantucket.

As we can see, we can attach to the second story instances of “things happening for a reason” that led Finn Murphy on a journey paved by one reason or another, each a pivotal episode in his life. On the other hand, Kate Fowler finds that there must be a reason for why she has cancer where most people may find difficult to grasp. We must ask, “Should there really be a reason for anything every time?” Before we go any further we must understand that “reason” in this case should not be equated to “cause”. The collapse of a building is caused by an earthquake. We struggle to find a reason why it must happen to many families living in that apartment. Obviously we can also say that the reason the building collapsed was due to shoddy construction. But we must say that not following the proper building codes to save money was caused by avarice and by uncaring contractors. That is why we need to delineate the difference precisely between reason and cause.  We have gotten used to the idea that sometimes or almost always, “there must be a reason” is invoked when some kind of redeeming value is gained after an unpleasant or tragic event.

Meanwhile, we need to be careful when we use that phrase about how or when we say it. For example, Kate Fowler, or anyone to whom such a sad episode happened, can say that about her situation but not to her by another person, even if it is an attempt to assuage the pain.  You see, how can one say, “there must be a reason” to a friend, to an orphaned child, or to a military or police widow in the wake of a tragic death? In fact, those directly impacted by a tragedy have a hard time accepting what happened, let alone finding a reason for why it did.  The most recent school shooting in Florida defies reasons or explanation in the eyes of the parents, the students, the whole community, and the whole nation. Our hearts go out to those young students who died and were injured and those traumatized by it and the parents and loved ones who must suffer through a most heinous act of violence.

Somewhere else, in many parts of the world we find sufferings from natural tragedies and atrocities by people against other people. One affected life is tragic enough and if we must go by numbers, the plight of men, women and children from ravaged places in Syria, Sudan and Venezuela, from three different continents, constitute a staggering multitude of people who suffer every day. Can we find a reason for their tragedies that could conceivably be for any kind of redemption? These are not just difficult questions. They are impossible to answer. Pages of our history are filled with far too many of these questions brought to us by the cruelty of oppressive rulers, mass murderers, malintentioned individuals, that to this day remain unanswerable.

A family missed their flight when the hotel shuttle bus broke down on its way to the airport. The plane crashed upon takeoff with no survivors.  The family rejoiced, convinced that the breakdown happened for a reason. But then, what about the other family who were standby passengers who took the subsequently opened seats? Their joy over getting those seats so they can make it to the family reunion on time was cut short.  How can something like that happen for a reason? It is impossible to answer.

Actuaries who do it for a living have a very detached view of such events (unless, of course, if it happens to their family members) because in their world only cold statistical analyses dictate the risks and probabilities that govern these tragedies. Causes and damages are assessed but hardly are reasons analyzed other than that humans are harmed and properties destroyed because somewhere at any time lightning strikes, volcanoes erupt, a tornado touches down, earthquakes rumble, traffic accidents occur, trains derail, planes crash, etc. Many more such events happen every day, too numerous to enumerate here, too many to classify by degrees because a death, a severe injury, the disruption and permanent impact on family and people are tragic regardless of spectral classification.

Where does this leave us? We have the mind that is capable, like no other living thing can, to think and ponder these questions. Alas, from the first moment man begun asking the question, answers have come and gone but there is no universal agreement as to which answer is the correct one. Almost every superstition has been debunked, though not completely eradicated from every corner of the globe. Philosophy merely asks more questions and where it tries to answer, debates ensue because even the most thoughtful line of reasoning cannot be tested in a laboratory. Logic, a branch of philosophy, can only do so much because logical proof deals with arguments of the mind under specific rules. Science and the enlightenment that came along with it had fallen short. There are still many unanswered questions; in fact, many answers had brought along more questions.  For example, science may have come up with answers in cosmology and theories abound in the macro world where much will likely remain forever incomplete, while the world of the very small (as in the behavior of sub-atomic particles) can be so counter intuitively puzzling, proving the limits of our capacity to understand.  The search for the truth remains but then what is the definition of the truth when there is just so much we cannot understand and probably never will.

This brings us to religion and faith. Organized religion can be defined as a collective aggregate of people sharing the same faith but as we can see there are many in the world and within each are branches of similar but different denominations and sects. However, a person’s faith can be personal, yet every individual of a certain faith is faced with a choice: must personal faith be more important than the general congregation’s or must the latter override the individual. This is not typically discussed openly within any church but we wonder. Then, there are those who profess no allegiance to or belief in any form of religion at all. They could be self-described agnostics or declarative non-believers.

We can look from the different points of view without getting into heated arguments to see where all of these lead. It is hard to keep our own convictions apart from any of these but let’s try.

Agnostics and non-believers may have this to say. They come with the argument that the universe had been here before we even begun to ponder our surroundings. They argue that believers have put so much self-importance in humanity where, in fact, their role or reason for existence is a miniscule component from the context of the universe. They’d borrow from Bill Bryson’s book, “Brief History of Everything”, where the author made a representation of human history from the context of the age of the planet (not that of the universe which is even longer). In one short analogy Bryson condensed the whole history of the earth in, say, the length of an average person’s arm beginning at the torso. Human history does not begin to manifest until at the very tip of the finger nail of the middle index finger. In other words, a few strokes of a nail file will erase the entire history of us. Non-believers therefore claim our stake in the universe is so negligible as to demand a reason for everything that happens, particularly in our individual lives.

The Judeo-Christian and Muslim faith profess that, regardless of humanity’s thin history relative to the age of the universe, humanity is at the pinnacle of creation. God not only created humans to populate what little part of the universe they were put in, God gave each human life the qualitative potential to attain a higher state of existence in the promised after-life, after transcending physical life, that is. Doing what is good according to the teachings prescribed by the Bible or the Koran and striving to stay away from the temptations of evil are the prerequisite not only to eternal life but a life free of all that ails humanity. Heaven is the ultimate goal of a pious life. Every civilization meanwhile had developed codes of morality over a foundation based on religious teachings whether it was for the good of society or as a personal guide for each individual so that he or she may live to fulfill the requirements and reap the rewards of what is promised.  Along with it civilizations have also sought to exact punishment to all who do terrible things.  Those condemned and unrepentant are expected to suffer even more upon their death. The second punishment is the spiritual equivalent of double taxation, as so often argued by non-believers. They argue sarcastically over the case of the death penalty. That for society to exact that on a sinner is itself a sin - an unnecessary act since there is already a punishment reserved in the afterlife. A counter argument to that, of course, is that society just merely facilitates the process by fast-tracking the criminal to the afterlife’s ultimate punishment. Now we see how these questions can quickly devolve into a heated argument.

There is one more that non-believers use to argue against people of faith. Their questions begin with “What about?” For example, what about young children, infants even, who pass on without a chance to live a full life?  What about those who lived in primitive culture or in remote locations as to not have had any opportunity to learn or even listen to the preachings of any religion or philosophical ideas? Countless generations passed through whose lives need to be accounted for.

We do not have to go back in time to see humanity's inhumanity to others. As recently as in this year's headlines we saw women and children victimized by poisoned chemicals dropped on entire villages in Syria. Young innocent children gasping for breath, bodies piled one on top of another were too horrific to watch, nightmarish to imagine but it was there for much of the world to see. Incredibly, what we see is a tiny fraction of all the atrocities that occur around the world today, infinitely smaller still relative to the entire recorded history.

Budhism and Hinduism and a few others of a similar belief system have a different view which rationalizes the fate of every living thing, including that of every man, woman and child through the rebirth doctrine also known as reincarnation. One's present life or how one conducts his or her life will have consequences in the next life. It is as if one's reward or punishment is meted out immediately upon death by being reborn into a life that is either blissful and blessed or that of misery based solely on how one lived the prior life. Children and infants are therefore afforded second chances to live a fuller life upon rebirth. There are several stages of rebirth - the highest being that of attaining Nirvana (their version perhaps of what heaven is in the Judeo-Christian religion, except that one must live several enlightened lives, as it were, to attain it or forever be condemned to everlasting suffering).


How are we then to resolve, if we try, the issue around the original premise or question, "Does everything happen for a reason?" The agnostics and non-believers do not have to deal with it because random events do not need reasons. Rebirth adherents are able to rationalize it on one hand, while those who believe in one life, one consequence, rely on faith to guide them in the conduct of their physical lives to prepare them for the eternal spiritual existence.

From all of the above we can tell how almost impossible it is for all the different doctrines to agree. There is, however, an almost universal agreement that we are predisposed to goodness, compassion and noble ideals over the inertia of human nature. Even non-believers and agnostics  agree on the universality of goodness.  The reason we say "almost universal" is because it seems that the forces of evil and everything contrary to good deeds are ever present. We note that history has enough to tell us and the fact that civilization in general and societies in particular have advanced to where it is today proves that the imbalance seems to favor goodness over bad, hope over despair, compassion over selfishness, and love over hate.